Mephedrone, the former legal high known as "meow meow", is as popular as cocaine among teenagers and young adults despite being banned last year

Mephedrone, the former legal high known as "meow meow", is as popular as cocaine among teenagers and young adults despite being banned last year, according to official figures.

Home Office figures drawn from the authoritative British Crime Survey estimate that around 300,000 16 to 24-year-olds, or 4.4% of their age group, used mephedrone in the past 12 months.

This is a similar level of popularity to the use of powder cocaine by teenagers and young adults. The BCS survey, drug misuse declared 2010/2011, say that mephedrone and cocaine rank joint second in popularity behind cannabis for this age group.

Mephedrone ranks alongside ecstasy in popularity among all drug users aged between 16 and 59, with 1.4% of all adults reporting they had used them in the past year.

The results of the annual survey of drug use in England and Wales show that almost 3 million people (8.8% of adults) used illicit drugs in the past year. They also show that one million of them – or 3% – used class-A drugs, with a fall in the use of cocaine accompanied by a rise in the use of methadone.

Around 2.2 million people aged 16 to 59 used cannabis last year and the survey also indicates a rise in popularity in ketamine in recent years.

The use of illegal drugs among the younger age group of 16 to 24 has, however, undergone a long-term decline, from 29% of the age group reporting they had used an illicit drug in 1996 to 20% in 2010/2011.

Home Office minister, James Brokenshire, denied that the alarming figures for the use of mephedrone, which was made illegal in April 2010, demonstrated that the ban had been ineffective. He said the BCS figures covered patterns of use before and after the ban had come into force. He stressed that just because a drug had been sold as a legal high it did not mean it was harmless.

But the interviews undertaken by the BCS for this year's report would have took place between April 2010 and March this year. Respondents were however asked about their illicit drug use in the previous 12 months, and so could have related to the period when mephedrone was a legal high.

Martin Barnes, the chief executive of drugs information charity DrugScope, said: "While the broad downward trends we can see in today's figures on drug use among school pupils and adults are both welcome and encouraging, the UK still has high levels of drug use in comparison to many of our European neighbours.

"The inclusion of mephedrone in the British Crime Survey for the first time reveals conclusively the extent to which the drug has become established on the drug market.

"Evidence on the long-term harms associated with the drug is still unclear, as is information on the risks of using it in combination with other substances. Given the timing of this survey, it is likely to include people who used the drug before it was classified in April 2010."

He said Addaction, a provider of young people's treatment, had seen a rise in the number of young people coming forward with problems relating to alcohol, ketamine and mephedrone. "This is at a time when funding for young people's treatment services is being severely affected by local authority cuts," Barnes said. "DrugScope and a number of our member organisations have recently spoken out about funding cuts which appear to be disproportionately affecting young people's drug treatment, education and prevention work."

The detailed BCS figures show that other banned "legal highs" such as "spice", which imitates the effects of cannabis, have not established themselves in the same way as mephedrone. The research shows that the vast majority of those who said they had taken mephedrone in the past year were existing drug users rather than new users.