15 sex partners common in US

The average number of sexual partners was 6.8 for men and 3.7 for women, said the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention survey. It included 6 237 people, ages 20 to 59, who were asked about their sexual habits and drug use. The data was collected from 1999 to 2002, Bloomberg news reported.

Among the other survey findings:

• Only four percent of adults ages 20 and older have never had sex.
• About one in seven respondents (16 percent) said they first had sex before age 15.
• More than one in five adults aged 20 to 49 have tried cocaine or other street drugs at some point in their lives, and five percent said they had used such drugs within the previous year.

The findings about Americans' sexual habits suggest that the Bush administration's emphasis on promoting abstinence among unmarried people as a way of preventing sexually transmitted diseases is inadequate, said one expert.

"To rely on just one strategy for something is just bad; the more options you have, the more likely people are to use one of them," Bean Robinson, a psychologist and sexual behaviour researcher at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, told Bloomberg. – (HealthDayNews)

June 2007