Cocaine deaths hit record as UK use surges among older users

Britain’s cocaine habit is now worth nearly £10 billion a year, with sewage samples showing consumption jumped by more than a quarter between 2021 and 2025. The Home Office’s experimental estimate, published in June, suggests England alone got through 123,000kg of cocaine in 2024-25 — roughly 2.5 billion lines with a street value of £9.8bn. Yet the number of people admitting to using the drug in surveys has stayed flat or even fallen slightly since the pandemic. Dr Josh Torrance, a specialist in drug markets, says the discrepancy is no mystery. “People are often not honest about their drug use with strangers,” he said. Wastewater analysis, he added, can reveal what surveys miss — and what it reveals is that a similar or smaller group of users is simply taking cocaine more often.

Ageing users and falling prices

The profile of Britain’s cocaine user is changing. Younger people are still the most likely to take the drug, but use among them is falling while it rises in older age groups. In England, 33,612 people started treatment for cocaine problems in 2024-25 — a 57% increase on 2019-20. The largest group seeking help is now people in their 30s, whereas a decade earlier it was those in their 20s. “We’ve seen a cohort of cocaine users age and continue to use cocaine,” said Torrance.

So why are they using more? Price is a big factor. The National Crime Agency says wholesale cocaine prices dropped below pre-pandemic levels in 2022 and hit “historically low levels” in 2025. Torrance, who tracks advertised prices for an ounce of cocaine, recorded a fall from about £1,300 in March 2022 to £1,000 in August 2023, then to around £700 when data collection resumed in September 2025. Prices stayed flat until June this year, then jumped to roughly £800, then £1,000 in July, before easing to about £950 in September. “I’ve never seen such a quick increase in the price of cocaine,” he said.

Record deaths and missed prevention

More cocaine, more often, with high purity — the NCA says wholesale purity has been high in recent years — has driven deaths to record levels in England and Wales. More than half of those who died last year were over 40. Acute overdose often involves cardiac problems, but long-term use adds further health risks. Torrance believes the failure to invest in prevention is partly to blame. “One reason cocaine deaths have risen so dramatically over the last five to 10 years is that we didn’t invest in upstream prevention,” he said.

Police data points the same way. Recorded crimes mentioning cocaine rose 10% since 2019, with almost 30,000 such crimes logged in 2025. Most were drug offences, but 18% were violent crimes and 4% sexual offences, including 344 rapes. Nearly six in 10 domestic abuse suspects tested positive for cocaine between July 2025 and June this year, according to the Home Office. The figures don’t prove causation, but they do indicate the direction of travel. And without earlier drug education and better support for at-risk people, Torrance warns, the problems will persist for decades.