A stubborn problem: cocaine abuse in the UK
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Cocaine is the only Class A drug on the rise in the UK - and has been for decades.
The government is losing the battle against the nation’s cocaine habit, Home Office figures published yesterday have revealed.
Cocaine is the only class A drug that has increased over the last decade, with more than 700,000 people a year now using it, as the latest British Crime Report shows. The use of cocaine powder has nearly quadrupled since measurement began in 1995, while overall drug abuse is at its lowest level since more than a decade.
The government will launch a major new anti-cocaine campaign next month to try to tackle Britain’s stubborn cocaine problem. However, as the new figures show, the government’s anti-drugs campaigns in the past have been ineffective in reigning in cocaine addiction and tackling its underlying causes.
A combination of falling street prices and a comparatively positive image are key factors behind the decade-spanning cocaine trend, according to drug charities such as DrugScope.
Cocaine is often described as a middle class “dinner party drug” and is generally perceived as a comparably safe choice in comparison to other class A drugs such as ecstasy and heroin. Martin Barnes, chief executive of DrugScope, said that “the drug has become more commonly used across the social spectrum but has not lost all of its so-called glamorous image.”
There is still little awareness that cocaine is highly addictive and causes growing numbers of deaths each year, according to drug experts. Since last year, the cocaine death toll has risen from 174 to 239 per year, according to a report published by the International Centre for Drug Policy’s earlier this month.
There are also wider social and environmental consequences, not just in the UK but also in the countries where the drug is produced. Earlier this month, Columbian vice-president Francisco Cantos Calderón said:
“Every time you consume one gram of cocaine, you are destroying 4.4 square metres of Colombian rainforest.”
Image credit: photo by Flickr User Andronikusmax under a creative commons license
