Drug trends

Information provided by participants in the 2005 Illicit Drug Monitoring System (IDMS) Research Briefing suggests that LSD use has been declining in recent years. This may be due to the recent emergence of ecstasy and methamphetamine. More than 50% of methamphetamine users said that less of the people they know were using LSD compared to six months ago.

This decline in demand seems to have impacted on supply as customary LSD purchasers reported that it was now relatively difficult to obtain. However the LSD market still exists despite increased interest in methamphetamine and ecstasy. This may be because LSD is not as highly addictive a stimulant.

Recent surveys indicate that:

• 82 percent of frequent hallucinogen users were male with a median age of 24 years old.
• 62 percent of the frequent hallucinogen users interviewed had used LSD in the previous six months.
• a tab of LSD was reported commonly to cost $35.
• the drug type for which the greatest proportion of participants indicated that availability had become "more difficult" in the last six months was LSD (21%)
• one in five of frequent hallucinogen users said that it could "take weeks" to purchase LSD
• LSD was the most popular hallucinogenic drug ever tried in both 1998 & 2001
• in 2001 9.6 percent of participants had tried LSD, 3.2 percent of them had tried LSD in the last year, and 2 percent were current users.