RESEARCH / VERSION 1.1 / 16 OCTOBER 2026
UK retail market, 2003/04
Baseline estimate: £5.271bn; source rounds its range to £4.0–£6.6bn.
| Field | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Reference period | 2003/04 |
| Coverage | United Kingdom |
| Status | Published estimate |
| Source-check date | 2026-10-14 |
| Measure | Retail spending |
| Value | 5.271 GBP billion |
| Currency / price basis | Nominal/source-period prices; no CLA inflation adjustment |
| Publication date | 2006-11-23 |
| Reference period | 2003/04 |
| Substances covered | Cannabis Amphetamines Ecstasy Powder cocaine Crack cocaine Heroin |
| Method | Demand-side model combining school, household and arrestee surveys, with assumed consumption, prices and purity. UK estimates scale the England and Wales model. |
| Estimate family | home-office-2003-04 |
| Relationship to other estimates | baseline |
| Earlier estimate repeated / parent | No parent link asserted |
| Reported range | 4–6.6 GBP billion |
| Variant: UK baseline | 5.271 GBP billion; United Kingdom; baseline; range 4–6.6 |
| Variant: England and Wales baseline | 4.645 GBP billion; England and Wales; geographical subset; range 3.5–5.8 |
| Variant: UK arrestee under-reporting adjustment | 5.639 GBP billion; United Kingdom; sensitivity variant. The adjustment was not extended to non-arrestee groups. |
| Variant / component limit | The three variants share one study. They overlap and must not be added. |
| Uncertainty | Published rounded margin-of-error range, incorporating modelling assumptions; not a new CLA confidence interval. |
Interpretation limits
Historical model. Assumption and sampling uncertainty are substantial; changes from the 1998 study are not a clean time trend.
Sources
- Home Office Online Report 16/06: Measuring different aspects of problem drug use, second edition — Chapter 4, printed p.46, Table S4.1 (PDF p.53); methodology p.47
Cite this record
Civil Liberties Action (2026). The illegal drugs economy: UK retail market, 2003/04. Record economy-ho-2003-uk, version 1.1, 2026-10-16. https://cla-political-finance.copperchime4.chatgpt.site/databases/releases/2026-10-16-v1.1/records/economy/economy-ho-2003-uk.html
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