As the ACMD’s successor to sacked advisor, Prof David Nutt, Prof Les Iversen and his team have conducted its first undertaking being the review on cocaine.  There has been a five-fold increase in users since 1996 and use among those in age bracket 16-59 has increased to 3% from 0.6% in the same period.  Iversen has told Home Secretary Alan Johnson that cocaine should remain in Class A due to its harmful effects.

The Scottish government has taken initiative to stream cocaine related ads on the music website Spotify as part of its Know the Score campaign, warning people against the highly addictive drug.  Targeting 16-22 year olds, the ads are now being screened in cinemas.  Listen to one of the adverts here.

A study has revealed that 3% of sudden deaths are linked to cocaine usage.  Cocaine can cause heart attacks, life-threatening heart rhythms, strokes and sudden death.  The British Heart Foundation has stated that the image of cocaine being a “safe party drug” needs to be dispelled.  Even though the study was conducted in Spain, researchers state that these findings need to be applied to Europe “as a whole.”

There is evidently more and more interest in the health issues arising when cocaine and alcohol are combined as some of our Cocaethylene hair drug testing data was published in yesterday’s Observer. Watch out for more on this site about the regional breakdown of stats as we map out the extent of the problem in the UK.

News from the regions reaches us with a West Midlands community safety campaign warning about the dangers of mixing alcohol and cocaine, saying that cocaethylene increases the risk of sudden death by 18 times. Clearly this shows there are growing concerns about this combination of substance abuse over the festive period.