Cocaine has somehow clung onto an image of wealth and glamour, when the usage figures point to an overwhelming reality of pub toilets, toothless chavs and football hooligans. People in England consumed an estimated 123,000kg of cocaine in a single year, according to Home Office sewage testing, a retail market worth £9.8bn.
That covers August 2024 to July 2025. The Home Office report puts the margin of error at plus or minus 39,400kg, and says the figure is 26% higher than in 2021. The Guardian converts it to roughly 2.5bn lines.
Cocaine dwarfs everything else in the sewers (in terms of drugs that is). The same Home Office programme put ketamine at 30,800kg and heroin at 6,800kg, according to Police Professional.
What the pipes can and cannot say
Wastewater testing looks for the metabolites the body leaves behind. It measures how much a population has taken, not who took it.
So it cannot show whether more people are using cocaine, whether the same people are using more, or both. The Guardian’s analysis of the data points to an established market in which some users take more, more often, and face greater harm as they age.
The picture is not a straight line upwards. A separate Home Office series covering 16 consistently sampled sites found average consumption in January to April 2026 was 7% below the same months of 2025, but still 17% above 2021, Econotimes reported.
The sewers also keep a calendar. Imperial College London researchers analysed more than 1,700 samples from 15 treatment sites in 2022. They found spikes in recreational drug use around England’s World Cup games, summer heatwaves, music events and bank holidays, including the Queen’s Jubilee. Cocaine had the highest average daily levels of any drug tested.
The price of a night out
The Guardian reports that cocaine prices fell year on year and reached “historically low levels” last year. The National Crime Agency said prices were lower in 2025 than in 2024 while wholesale purity stayed high, according to Econotimes.
The NCA assessed that wider availability and competition between criminal groups probably contributed. UK seizures rose from 3.4 tonnes in 2015 to 18.5 tonnes in 2025, the agency said.
Europe-wide figures tell a similar story. The EU drugs agency’s European Drug Report 2026 says retail prices have fallen over the past decade while purity in 2024 was 44% above the 2014 level.
Cheaper and stronger has not erased cocaine’s image as a middle-class drug, the Guardian found. It has simply spread to more people and more places: nightclubs, student house parties, dinner parties and the pub.
A pub manager in east London told the Guardian she cleans cocaine residue from toilet surfaces most mornings. She said the problem had become “significantly worse” over the past five years. She also said staff are reluctant to talk about it publicly because they fear losing their licence.
Crime and consequences
The Guardian’s investigation found a 10% rise since 2019 in recorded crimes where cocaine was mentioned. Those are crimes in which the drug featured, not offences caused by it.
Cocaine has also turned up in reviews of mass disorder. Baroness Casey’s independent review of the Euro 2020 final at Wembley found that “excessive consumption of alcohol and cocaine” fuelled a febrile atmosphere, the Guardian said. It also reported that some people involved in the 2024 summer riots were found with the drug or had taken it beforehand. Two rioters later pleaded guilty to selling it.
The human cost shows in the mortality figures. Econotimes cites the Office for National Statistics as recording 1,279 deaths involving cocaine in 2024. The Guardian’s data analysis describes deaths linked to the drug as being at record levels.
Possession of the class A drug carries a maximum sentence of seven years. For a first offence, the Guardian notes, a police caution is more likely.
The Home Office’s next wastewater report will show whether the dip in early 2026 holds.
Sources: The Guardian, GOV.UK (Home Office), Police Professional, Econotimes, Imperial College London, EUDA
This story was compiled by the MDW Newsdesk with AI-assisted tools, using the reporting credited above. Featured image by timbo from Pixabay
