ONE FIFTH of teenagers pretend to have taken drugs to make themselves look cool, but do not in reality do anything of the kind, a government-backed study carried out throughout Britain suggests.

The findings, likely to come as a huge relief to many parents, indicate that drugtaking is far less important to many teenagers than being seen to have the right fashion and music tastes and being able to “talk the talk” about drugs.

“Just because your daughter is dressed in black, has a white face and has become a ‘goth’ and may talk about drugs, that does not mean that she is on an inexorable road to becoming a junkie. The two do not go together,” Peter Marsh, the social psychologist who wrote the report, said.

Darren Hall, a spokesman for Frank, the Home Office’s national drugs information service which commissioned the research, added: “It is encouraging that while young people may talk about drug-taking, they are not necessarily experimenting with drugs themselves.”

The study analysed the “presentation tactics” used by teenagers to gain entry into social groups, or tribes, looking in particular at their attitudes to drugs, their music tastes, dress sense and hairstyles. It identified ten leading teen tribes, using data from the youth market research company Dubit.

Fitting in with the tribe was the main reason given for pretending to have taken drugs. More than a third of those surveyed said they had pretended to take drugs to “be like the rest”. The second-strongest reason for pretending was “to get attention”.

Music tastes and appearance were the obvious ways in which young people could define themselves, although the ways in which they talked about themselves and their peers also helped them to create a sense of self. To gain entry to their chosen tribe and be accepted by other members, the teenagers often “talked up” their drugs misuse while 11 per cent of the under-14s had used this tactic to “get off” with someone.

“As they make the hormone-laden journey from child to adult, they forge a personal identity by first creating a social identity,” Dr Marsh said. “To be an individual, we first need to be one of the lads or lasses, and listening to at least some of the ‘right’ bands and adopting the ‘uniform’ of the group are the most important factors for teenagers looking to fit in.”

Rather than panic that their offspring are on a downward spiral into drug use and delinquency if their dress sense is a little different, parents should accept that they are more likely to be making a fashion statement than turning to drugs.

Teenagers may need to know the jargon of drugs to pass muster as an insider, Dr Marsh said. The study also found that teen tribes operated a tacit conspiracy in which a little exaggeration on the part of their members was fully accepted.

According to Home Office estimates, a quarter of teenagers aged 16 to 19 have used cannabis in the past year, 4 per cent have used Ecstasy, 3 per cent have used cocaine, 2.9 per cent have used amphetamines, 0.4 per cent have used crack and 0.1 per cent have used heroin.

Because of the uncertainty about whether people tell the truth in surveys about their own drug use, the Frank study asked the youngsters about their friends to get an idea, by implication, of the young people themselves.

One fifth of the 1,000 surveyed 11 to 19-year-olds said they thought their friends pretended to have taken drugs as an act of bravado when they had not in fact done so.

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