High Society: A Decade of Drug Use in the UK, by Class

From nitrous oxide to nightlife cocaine, Britain’s drug use has become a curious mirror of its class system—of both substance and society. What’s changed over the past decade isn’t just what people are taking, but why—and who gets to take it in the first place.

If you want to understand a culture, don’t just study its art—study its vices. Over the past decade, the UK’s relationship with recreational drugs has told a story not just of substance use, but of social class, generational shift, and political control.

Every year, around 1 in 11 adults in Britain—that’s roughly 3.3 million people—report using an illicit drug. On paper, that number has barely budged since 2014. But that apparent stability masks a deeper churn: new drugs rise and fall, youth trends peak and collapse, and the old certainties—like who’s using what, and where—are being quietly rewritten.

Let’s take a closer look.

Class A: Party Favors

These are the headline-grabbers: cocaine, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, heroin. They’re the substances that get name-dropped in tabloids and techno raves alike. And over the past ten years, Class A drug use has hovered around 3% of the adult population, with a spike in the late 2010s that has since receded.

What drove that spike? One word: nightlife. Between 2016 and 2019, powder cocaine and MDMA became inseparable from Britain’s club culture. Among 16–24-year-olds, Class A use surged to 8.7%, fuelled by pre-drinks, post-raves, and a culture that increasingly saw ecstasy not as rebellion, but as ritual.

But then came COVID. Clubs closed. Social gatherings vanished. And with them, Class A use dropped.

Post-pandemic, the rebound has been… restrained. MDMA is down. Cocaine is holding steady. The only substance showing a small renaissance? Magic mushrooms. With whispers of therapeutic use and a global psychedelics revival, mushrooms now feel less like a ‘trip’ and more like a soft rebellion—spiritual, introspective, Instagrammable.

Class B: Cannabis and the Myth of the Middle

Cannabis remains the UK’s most-used illegal drug by a mile—6.8% of adults used it last year, and at its peak, that figure approached 8%. But what’s striking isn’t just the numbers; it’s the shifting context.

Cannabis in 2024 feels oddly… boring. Not because it lacks cultural weight (it doesn’t), but because it’s become normalized. In cities and on campuses, its use is as unremarkable as ordering an oat milk flat white.

That normalization has flattened its class profile. Cannabis is no longer a countercultural act—it’s a lifestyle staple across both Shoreditch creatives and small-town students. But recent years have seen usage start to decline, especially among 16–24-year-olds. Why?

Possibly, it’s fatigue. Or stronger strains. Or simply the fact that cannabis is no longer seen as daring—it’s domestic. And for a generation hooked on novelty, that may be its undoing.

Ketamine, meanwhile, has quietly moved from fringe anesthetic to a club drug of choice. Its rise has been slower, more niche, more Gen Z. It’s Class B’s secret handshake.

Class C: The Curious Case of Nitrous Oxide

Ah, nitrous. Once the darling of festival fields and TikTok feeds, “laughing gas” went from harmless high to public enemy in record time.

In 2018, nearly 9% of 16–24-year-olds were using it. Canisters littered parks. Headlines warned of nerve damage. Then came policy: in November 2023, nitrous oxide was made a Class C drug.

Today, its popularity has collapsed—just 0.9% of adults used it last year. The speed of that fall is almost poetic. Nitrous wasn’t just banned—it became embarrassing. A flash fad turned cautionary tale.

Elsewhere in Class C, things are quiet. Tranquilizers and steroids remain low-use, high-risk, and overwhelmingly male. If Class C were a playlist, it’d be lo-fi: background noise, punctuated by the occasional public panic.

Who’s Using What? A Quick Demographic Snapshot

• Young adults (16–24) use the most drugs by far—up to 21% in some years.
• Men use nearly double the drugs women do, across all categories.
• Urbanites are more likely to use drugs than rural residents.
• Nightlife-goers (especially clubbers and festival attendees) have drug use rates up to 8x higher than non-clubbers.
• Drug use has a U-shaped curve with income: highest among the rich and the poor, lower in the middle. Status and struggle, both chasing an altered state.

The Pandemic Reset

COVID wasn’t just a health crisis—it was a social experiment. With clubs shut and streets quiet, drug use dropped almost across the board. Cocaine, MDMA, even cannabis saw declines. Some users turned inward—toward alcohol, anxiety, or abstinence. Others simply paused.

But perhaps the most lasting effect of the pandemic was on our rituals. Drug use in the UK has always been social. It’s about where you use, who you use with, how you perform it. The loss of those shared spaces—bars, raves, parks—cut deeper than any policy ever could.

The Bigger Picture: Drugs as Cultural Currency

Recreational drug use isn’t just a public health issue—it’s a cultural phenomenon. Aesthetic, economic, and symbolic. To dismiss it as mere delinquency is to miss the point.

What we’ve seen over the past decade is not a war on drugs, but a war on visibility. The types of drugs used haven’t changed dramatically—but how they’re perceived, legislated, and morally framed has.

Cocaine remains the city boy’s supplement. Cannabis the freelancer’s unwind. MDMA the festival baptiser. Mushrooms the spiritual cleanse. Nitrous the TikTok blip. Each substance carries a semiotic weight, a coded class and culture signal.

In Britain, even your vice is a class marker.

Final Hit

So, what does the future hold? Expect psychedelics to rise, as mental health and mindfulness trends meet neo-spiritual capitalism. Expect synthetics to diversify, sold in secret corners of Telegram. And expect policymakers to play catch-up, again and again.

But don’t expect drug use to disappear. It won’t. Because in a society this anxious, this atomised, this alienated, a little chemical transcendence remains—ironically—one of the most human things we do.