More youth here report knowing someone who has taken drugs

More permissive attitudes towards drugs among the young also worry parents, experts

- Gladys Wee

More young people in Singapore personally know someone who had taken drugs, a survey by the National Council Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) shows.

This was revealed in the survey in 2023 whose participants included 3,000 youth aged 13 to 29, with 18 per cent of them reporting that they knew someone who had taken drugs.

This was up from 10.6 per cent in a previous iteration of the survey in 2019.

Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim cited these figures at a seminar on Aug 3 at *Scape for parents on the harms of drug abuse.

The survey also involved 1,500 adults aged 30 and above.

The survey, which came amid an increase in young drug abusers in Singapore, also revealed more permissive attitudes towards drugs among youth, Associate Professor Faishal said in his opening address.

“More worryingly, among secondary school students, only 60 per cent of them agreed that drugs are more harmful than tobacco, despite scientific evidence incontrovertibly showing this,” Prof Faishal said.

He added that there is some concern over youth drug abuse. From 2022 to 2023, the number of abusers here aged below 20 rose by 11 per cent.

Drug abuse can start at a very young age, he noted, as shown in the Health and Lifestyle Survey conducted by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in 2022. It found that the mean age of onset of drug abuse was under 16.