editorial comment In the meantime, 95% of adult users pretend not to take any to look responsible :)

One-fifth of teenagers say their friends pretend to take drugs to look "cool", new research reveals.

The teenagers said their friends were pressured into faking drug-taking in order to fit in with their peers.

The report, by confidential drugs helpline FRANK, showed that almost half of the youngsters questioned said the need to fit in with their group dictated their friends' behaviour.

Boys were twice as likely as girls to pretend they had taken drugs, and teenagers living in the South East were more prone to talking up their behaviour.

Dr Peter Marsh, director of the Social Issues Research Centre and author of the FRANK report, said: "Teenagers today learn to understand who they are by defining themselves through social bonds and affiliations with a peer group.

"As they make the hormone-laden journey from child to adult, they forge a personal identity by first creating a social identity.

"Music tastes and appearance are the obvious ways to define oneself, but the ways in which young people talk about themselves to their peers also helps them to create a sense of self."

He said: "To be an individual, we first need to be one of the lads or lasses."

Darren Hall, spokesman for FRANK, argued that the report could be looked at in a more positive light.

He said: "It is encouraging that while young people may talk about drug-taking, they aren't necessarily experimenting with drugs themselves."

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