Britain's cocaine habit exposed
Thursday, 23 Nov 2006 18:40
Law enforcers are failing to lower Britain's cocaine problem
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Levels of cocaine abuse in the UK are among the highest in Europe, a report has shown.
Data from the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drugs Addiction (EMCDDA) shows that a dramatic surge in the level of cocaine use occurred in the late 1990s in western European countries, including the UK, and that this stabilised in 2001.
While growth in drug use since then has levelled out, the report makes it clear that there is no room for complacency because drug use remains at "historically high levels".
"Studies suggest that it is a common pattern for increases in problems relating to a drug to lag some years behind increases in prevalence," the report notes.
"This is because it takes time for intensive and regular patterns of drug use to develop and for problems to become visible. This may be beginning to happen in those European countries where cocaine use is now well established."
One such country is Britain, which saw the highest proportion of its population having tried the drug at least once, at 6.1 per cent. Britain came behind Spain on use in the last 12 months, however, with two per cent as opposed to Spain's 2.7 per cent.
The report estimated that approximately one in 15 young males had tried cocaine recently.
Britain's poor cocaine record reflects what the report describes as a "concerning" rise in the drug's use throughout the whole of mainland Europe.
In total 1.5 million people will have used cocaine in the last 30 days, with over ten million taking the drug at some stage in their lifetime.