What is the nature of drink spiking?
There is no single ‘typical’ incident of drink spiking. Rather, drink spiking appears to be a complicated phenomenon which can occur in a variety of locations, against a variety of victims, with a variety of different spiking additives, for a number of different reasons resulting in disparate effects and consequences. Based on analyses of police data, sexual assault data and AIC hotline data in the UK it was found that: • 4 out of 5 victims are female; • about half of drink spiking victims are aged under 24, while about one third are aged between 25 and 34; • the majority of reported drink spiking incidents have no associated criminal victimisation, indicating that ‘prank spiking’ may be a common motivation for drink spiking; • between 20 and 30 per cent of incidents reported to police involve sexual assault, while it is estimated that about one third of all drink spiking incidents are associated with sexual assault; • about five per cent of incidents involve robbery; • two thirds of s
