KEY FACTS
- Cocaine is a class A stimulant drug. Importation,
dealing and possession are all illegal attracting penalties of
up to life imprisonment and unlimited fines
- Cocaine comes in two forms: cocaine powder which
is snorted, and crack cocaine which is smoked; both forms can
be injected
- The street price of cocaine powder has halved
over the past ten years, from £80 per gram in 1999 to £40
in 2009. A line of cocaine in London now costs between £2-£8,
depending on its size
- Cocaine is heavily cut with other substances,
including anaesthetics and animal worming agents; police seizures
of cocaine in 2009 averaged 27% purity, with some as low as 5%
- The UK has the second highest number of cocaine
users in Europe: the number of adults who used cocaine powder
within the last year quintupled from 0.6% in 1996 to 3.0% in 2008/09
- The number of people in treatment for cocaine
powder addiction increased by 17% between 2006/07 and 2007/08
- The number of non-fatal hospital admissions for
cocaine poisoning in England more than tripled between 2000/01
and 2006/07
- There were 235 cocaine-related deaths in England
and Wales in 2008, an increase of 20% compared with 2007
- Combining cocaine with alcohol forms a highly
toxic third substance, cocaethylene, which has been associated
with a 25-fold increase in sudden death
- For each gram of cocaine consumed, 4 square metres
of tropical forest are destroyed
- Drugs mules are often forced to swallow up to
20 pellets of cocaine, or insert 500g pellets the size of a pint
glass into body cavities
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