Cocaine use among young adults in Britain is expanding faster than anywhere else in Europe according to a new Drug misuse report. The annual report from the Lisbon based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, giving figures for 2000, shows that 5% of people in England and Wales between the ages of 16 and 29 took the drug at some point during the previous 12 months compared with 1% in 1996.

“Overall, the drug situation in the United Kingdom is very stable, but we have seen a sharp increase in the use of cocaine as it becomes more acceptable on the recreational scene, said Mike Trace, the United Kingdom’s former deputy drugs ‘tsar’ who now chairs the centres management board. Throughout Europe cannabis remains the most popular illegal drug. While 30% of British adults and 25% of Danes have smoked a cannabis cigarette at some point in their lives, just 10% of Finns have done so.

Source: The 2002 Annual Report on the State of the Drugs Problem in the European Union and Norway Reported in BMJ 2002; 325:794