Cocaine use rising fast among young Britons

Cocaine use among young adults is almost twice as high in Britain as in most other European countries and is rising fast, a drug survey revealed yesterday.

The annual report on the use of drugs in the European Union and Norway paints an alarming picture of consumption in the UK, which is fuelled by the lowest prices for the hard drug in Europe.

The document shows that 5 per cent of Britons aged between 16 and 29 used cocaine in 2000. Of 10 other nations where similar data was available, the next highest was Spain, where 2.7 per cent of people aged 15 to 34 used the drug in 1999.

Meanwhile, a comparison with four nations shows that the rate of cocaine use in England and Wales has been the fastest rising since 1996. "Increase of recent cocaine use seems consistent among young people in the UK, and possibly to a lesser extent in Denmark, Germany and Greece," says the report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon.

The centre added that the cost of cocaine varied from €45 (£28) to €170 a gram in 2000 with the lowest prices being found in the UK and Spain, and the highest in Finland. But Britain's worrying drugs record is not limited to the high use of cocaine. In 2000, one third of the nine tonnes of heroin intercepted in the EU was seized in the UK.

And the report also shows that more than one in 10 of the population of the UK has tried amphetamines or "speed" – almost twice the rate for any other EU member state.

Overall, Britain is listed with Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal as having the highest estimated level of "problem drug use" – defined as the injection of drugs or the long-term or regular use of opiates, cocaine and amphetamines. These countries have between six and eight cases per 1,000 people, by comparison to Austria, Germany and the Netherlands – which have more liberal drugs laws – where the rate is three per 1,000.

The EU's centre for drugs monitoring confirmed that cannabis remains the most commonly used illegal drug in Europe – with those having taken it ranging from about 10 per cent of adults in Finland to up to 30 per cent in Denmark and the UK.

In most other member states, the rate is about 20 per cent of the adult population, with cannabis use levelling off or even falling in Ireland, the Netherlands and in Finland.

The report highlights the consumption of synthetic drugs including ecstasy, particularly among the young in "nightlife and dance settings", even though at present this drug affects less than 3 per cent of the population. Another growing phenomenon is the use of two illegal drugs at one time time or consuming one with alcohol or tobacco.

There is some good news. The UK has the lowest rate for the spread of HIV among injecting drug users – just 1 per cent – compared with Spain, where more than one third of injecting drug users are infected with the Aids virus.

Drug use in prison was also reported to be growing – drug users represented a higher proportion of the prison population than in the outside world.

The report said that the presence of drugs had "fundamentally changed prison reality", with the level of use of some form of illicit narcotics put as high as 86 per cent, and routinely at more than 50 per cent among inmates. But it also pointed out that most drug users in prison tended to stop or cut down when they were released. The reason given was that they no longer had access to the drugs.