LONDON has the biggest cocaine habit in Europe, with 74,000 residents having what a new report describes as a “serious drug problem”.
Popular on LondonNet
That figure is about 1% of London’s population and you can probably times that by five or ten for occasional users. On the plus side, cocaine use in London and across the world has started to fall in recent years.
Those are two of the findings of a new survey by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which also reported that 5% of British 16-year-olds have tried cocaine.
“Past runaway growth has flattened out and the drug crisis of the 1990s seems under control,” said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN drugs agency.
“The UK continues to be – in absolute numbers – Europe’s largest cocaine market.”
Second in the UN’s cocaine league table is Spain, then Italy and Germany.
Increased police attacks on the drug trade have pushed up prices in the last two years, the UN survey added, which has in turn led to cocaine being cut more and more with other powders, such as dental and veterinary anaesthetics.
