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Commentary

Although ACT secondary students’ reported illicit drug use remained relatively stable between the 2014 and 2017 surveys, there have been significant decreases over the reporting periods. This is most obvious in the used at least one illicit drug in their lifetime category, which dropped from 37.0% in 1996 to 15.6% in 2017. During the same period, the proportion of students who reported using an illicit drug at least once in the last year significantly decreased from 32.1% to 12.7%, respectively, last month from 17.7% to 5.0%, respectively, and last week from 11.7% to 2.6%, respectively.

Used at least one illicit drug refers to the use of amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, hallucinogens or marijuana.

Please note that this indicator was updated in 2022 and replaces all previous versions.

For the purpose of reporting the Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug survey data on HealthStats, if the 95% confidence intervals of the estimates do not overlap, they are considered to be significantly different.

Chart

Used at least one illicit drug: ever, last year, last month, last week, ACT Secondary Students aged 12-17 years, 1996-2017

Data

To access the data, select "View source data" link at the bottom of the visualisation. This link will open up a data table that you can download.

Codes and sources

A copy of the Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug survey can be found in Data collections.

This page is managed by: ACT Health Directorate