A NATION ADDICTED: COCAINE - BRITAIN'S DEADLY HABIT

A major new report shows that 1.75 million young adults use a drug
that most think is harmless. But 171 people have died from its use
last year, an increase of 300 per cent in five years. Jonathan Owen
and Sophie Goodchild report

'I was snorting cocaine like a pig," says Tim Burgess. "Everyone was
worried and thought I had a month to live." Coke was easy to get hold
of. After all Burgess was the lead singer of the Charlatans, at the
time one of Britain's biggest bands. He was so in thrall to "charlie"
that he was snorting huge amounts of the drug "morning, noon and late
into the night".

What had started as recreational use when he was 22 years old became
a 17-year-habit that escalated into a serious addiction. The singer,
now 39, was so paranoid and withdrawn that he was barely able to function.

Burgess, who has lived in Los Angeles for the past few years, has
been clean for seven months since coming to London for treatment in
April. He is the latest of a slew of celebrities baring their souls
about bitter struggles with cocaine, but aspects of his story will
resonate with thousands of Britons.

Figures to be released this Thursday by the European Monitoring
Centre on Drugs and Drugs Addiction (EMCDDA), which reports on drug
use, will show that the UK is in the top three for the number of
cocaine users in Europe. The figures are based on evidence from 29
countries including Spain and France.

And findings submitted to the EMCDDA by UK government officials and
drug experts paint a frightening picture of soaring cocaine abuse in
the UK. They warn that although use of most class A drugs increases
by relatively small amounts, the number of people taking cocaine has soared.

The last decade has seen use of the drug almost triple among UK
adults. Over the same period, ecstasy use, for example, has fallen
and although cannabis use is much more widespread in society, its use
hasn't increased by anything like as much as cocaine.

Crack cocaine seizures have increased by 74 per cent since 2000 and
the number of people arrested or cautioned for cocaine offences rose
to 8,165 in 2003. Between April 2002 and December 2003 customs seized
more than 26,000kg of cocaine.

The UK report, obtained by this newspaper, shows that use of cocaine
has risen more than any other drug.

In a statement to The Independent on Sunday yesterday, Antonio Maria
Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime, warned of a "staggering" rise in the number of Britons using
the drug. He said there was "a steadily growing number of Britons...
are being seduced by the 'white lady'. Either Europe snaps out of its
state of denial," he warns, "or it should brace itself for the consequences".

Despite a constant stream of such dire warnings, coke has maintained
its image as a drug associated with a celebrity lifestyle and does
not have the stigma that surrounds other class A drugs such as
heroin. The drug's image has been given a boost by Kate Moss's
apparent transformation from shamed coke snorter to style icon in the
space of less than 12 months.

She was temporarily ditched from several high-profile modelling
contracts after a national newspaper published pictures apparently
showing her using the class A drug in a west London recording studio
last year. But her earnings this year were her highest ever, with a
whole range of new contracts and endorsements.

A potent combination of image and lower prices has helped fuel
cocaine's soaring popularity not just at home but also abroad. In the
case of the Ibiza set, more than three-quarters say they have taken
the drug, compared with only half last year. In contrast, there has
only been a small percentage rise in the number of users of ecstasy,
which once dominated the club scene.

The cost of cocaine has nearly halved over the past decade, which has
given rise to an alarming trend in bingeing on the drug because
people are getting more cocaine for their money. Professor Mark
Bellis, Director for the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John
Moores University, argues, "Cocaine used to be regarded as a
high-class drug but it is far more available and affordable now."

Cocaine is fast replacing ecstasy as the drug of choice on the club
scene for the first time, with record numbers of young people
snorting the powder for as little as UKP 30 a gram.

Nearly one in 10 people in their twenties who go to clubs admits to
taking two grams in a session - the equivalent of 40 lines.

These figures are based on a survey of more than 2,000 regular
club-goers across the country, ranging from students to civil
servants, carried out by the magazine Mixmag, seen as the clubbers' Bible.

Clubs, keen to avoid getting labelled as magnets for drug users, have
introduced special amnesty bins in a bid to encourage people to hand
over their drugs, without fear of police action, before a night out.

Health ministers and educationalists continually sound alarms about
teenagers becoming hooked on the drug. Cocaine has been in schools
for many years but is becoming so common that a number of schools are
seriously considering bringing in drug testing of pupils.

In one case, four teenage girls were expelled from a school in West
Sussex after snorting the drug in the toilets before lessons. Police
gave two pupils a warning after being alerted by staff at Holy
Trinity School in Gossops Green, Crawley.

Rebecca Smith (not her real name), a former pupil at Fortismere
School in London, is now 20 and has already seen how cocaine use has
increased since she left school, "Coke was everywhere... and since
I've left people say that it's got even worse. There are always
trends with drugs and at the moment cocaine is seen at the coolest."

Even more worryingly, the drug has graduated from weekend
recreational to a daily staple for increasing numbers. The IoS
revealed in September an increase of 3,000 per cent in the number of
workers caught with cocaine in their system over the past decade.

This is particularly significant because drugs like cocaine are
swiftly flushed out of the system and can be hard to detect,
indicating that users are high during the working week, not just at weekends.

Anti-addiction charities now fear that in the hunt for a harder high,
users will progress to crack cocaine. Harry Shapiro from the charity
Drugscope said, "It would appear that cocaine is increasingly the
class A drug of choice but there is a danger that some of these
cocaine users will become crack users."

London is now the cocaine capital of the world, according to a UN
report published earlier this year which revealed that one in 50
people have used cocaine in Britain - a higher figure than anywhere
else in the world, including countries such as the United States. Sir
Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, earlier this year
announced a clampdown on middle-class cocaine users.

In response to the explosion in cocaine use, Scotland Yard has taken
the unprecedented step of using undercover officers to pose as drug
suppliers in a bid to target recreational users.

Increasingly, cocaine is taking a toll on users' health. Latest
figures from the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths show
that the proportion of cocaine-related drug deaths has risen year on
year since they began collecting records of drug deaths in 1999.

The drug now accounts for more than 13 per cent of deaths, with 171
cocaine-related deaths in 2005.

This week, the Association of Chief Police Officers will be holding
its annual conference on drugs at which Britain's cocaine crisis will
be discussed.

Experts are also worried about a new trend among addicts of injecting
cocaine, a technique used by heroin users, to increase the hit from the drug.

There has been a huge rise in deaths and the Government needs to do
more to educate people about the dangers, including recreational
users, according to Professor John Henry, a leading expert on drugs
at St Mary's Hospital in London.

"People need to know that not only can you die from first use but
that you are also going to end up with arteries like a 60 year old
and with brain damage," he said. "There should be primary prevention
like there is in preventing cancer."

Combined alcohol and cocaine use is becoming a major concern to
health services and drug and alcohol treatment agencies. Addaction, a
drug and alcohol treatment charity, believes the cocaethylene issue
will emerge as a major health problem, namely liver failure, in the
future if "recreational" coke users who go out binge drinking are not
fully aware of the trouble they are storing up for their bodies.
Although there have been awareness campaigns about drink spiking and
personal safety, the charity warns that young recreational drug and
alcohol users need to be made aware of the dangers of combining
different drugs, such as cocaine and alcohol.

Tim Burgess needs no such warnings. His body is paying the price for
years of cocaine abuse. He is on medication for problems with his
kidneys and a swollen liver and reflects, "My white powder dreams
turned into a nightmare. I was just toying with myself, dancing with
the devil ... dancing with death ... I just lost control."

1. Paul Bettany

"It was slowly destroying me. I had this need to punish myself. I
stopped doing drugs when I realised I couldn't function without them."

2. Rod Stewart

"I don't know why anyone would want to take coke now. It was
different in my day, because it was all so much purer."

3. Mike Skinner (The Streets)

"I know I could buy two grand's worth of cocaine and do it all
tonight. And then get four more grand's worth and there would be
absolutely nothing to stop me."

4. Naomi Campbell

"What is very scary about cocaine is that you start to feel too
confident and indispensable, although none of us is indispensable."

5. Tracy Shaw

"I did coke because Darren did it - and that was it really. I would
never go back and it isn't a nice experience."

6. Jay Kay

"It's amazing how your friends aren't such friends when you're not
coming in and buying their supply."

7. Patsy Kensit

"I'm not proud of it. Sometimes I hang my head in shame. Drugs, they
ravage you."

8. Richard Bacon

"It was a drug that I found to be a huge anti-climax. After 25
minutes I needed to stave off the depression. It went on for 12 hours."

9. Darren Day

"Cocaine will take everything away from you. I still wake up in a
cold sweat at night, thinking of the money that I've blown on it."

10. Justin Hawkins

"I regularly used to stay up for four days at a time on coke and
alcohol binges. I became secretive, volatile and verbally abusive, a
really unpleasant person to be around."

11. Frank Bruno

"Taking [coke] was the worst thing I could have done in my mental
condition. It was like a black hole with no ending."

12. Sophie Anderton

"I was using alcohol to get numb, then cocaine to numb the alcohol,
and then Valium to numb the cocaine."

13. Shaun Ryder

"I was fucked, I was falling back into that trap - doing cocaine,
drinking too much. The first year on tour it was fun. After two I was
shaky and by the third I knew it had to stop."

14. Liam Gallagher

"The devil can be in cocaine ... The devil is everywhere but it
depends how strong you are. In 1996 I was doing as much cocaine as
anyone you've heard of, but I'm not addicted."

15. Robbie Williams

"I'd have about five grams of cocaine and as much booze as I could
get down my gullet. I don't have to do that any more. I'll just go
back to the hotel, have a cup of tea and play cards."

16. Kate Moss

Although "Cocaine Kate" has been careful not to talk about cocaine
herself, Pete Doherty has said about her: "With the amount of coke
Kate was taking, it's amazing she got through rehab."

17. Tara Palmer-Tompkinson

"For me what started off as a little naughtiness turned into a
full-blown habit. I became completely powerless under its spell."

18. Daniella Westbrook

"Whenever you sort of wake up from this haze that you are in, and the
first thing you do is reach ... for a line - that's when you know
you've hit a really bad point"

19. Pete Doherty

"I sparked up like a Christmas tree. Sticking a line of cocaine up
your nose is normal in the music industry ... it's rife. Drugs and
music are one and the same to me."

20. Elton John

"Coke is the worst. It's more rampant now than ever. Cocaine is more
a danger to me than drink. So I don't put myself in situations where
it might be."