Summary
This report gives an assessment, underpinned by urine testing, of recent drugs consumption on the part of the general range of suspected offenders arrested by the police. Based on fieldwork in four English locations, it builds on earlier research carried out in five places which was presented in Home Office Research Study 183, Drugs and Crime: the results of research on drug testing and interviewing arrestees (Bennett, 1998). Two of the five places covered in the present study, Nottingham and Sunderland, were also included in the earlier research. It is therefore possible to discuss changes in drug use by offenders over the period 1997-1999, for these two locations. This type of research has now become a rolling programme, taking in a wider set of places. The programme goes by the acronym NEW-ADAM (New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring). NEW-ADAM will help to track the progress of the Government’s drugs strategy.