Cocaine has overtaken heroin for the first time as the drug most often named in drug-poisoning deaths in England and Wales, official figures show.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its 2025 registrations on Wednesday 4 November. Great Driffield Radio reported that 1,233 registered deaths involved cocaine, against 1,210 for heroin or morphine. Records go back to 1993.
The gap is just 23 deaths, and cocaine deaths actually dipped from 1,279 in 2024. The real story is the long climb.
Heroin and morphine were involved in 1,201 deaths in 2015, so that figure has barely moved in a decade. Cocaine deaths have roughly quadrupled over the same period and now stand at more than eight times the 2010 level, the Guardian reported.
Cocaine featured in 22% of all drug-poisoning deaths. The overall total was 5,519, which is 46 fewer than in 2024 and the first fall in more than a decade. David Mais, the ONS head of mortality statistics, said deaths remained “historically high”.
From party drug to everyday habit
Wastewater analysis shows use of the class A drug is surging, according to the Guardian. It is turning up in pubs, festivals and workplaces. The paper also revealed last week that police are logging more cocaine-linked crime, including assaults, domestic abuse and dangerous driving, up 10% since 2019.
The people dying are not mainly the young. Some 64% of the cocaine deaths registered involved someone over 40, and the same age pattern shows up among people seeking help from treatment services.
Men account for most of them. Britbrief reported that 984 of the 1,233 cocaine deaths were men and 249 were women.
The trend has been building for some time. The Daily Telegraph reported in 2022 that there were 840 cocaine deaths registered in 2021, with ONS experts linking the rise to growing use, including among middle-class users. The 2025 figure is about 47% higher.
Cheaper, purer and little help on offer
Niamh Eastwood, executive director of the drugs-law charity Release, called the deaths a direct result of policy failure at home and abroad. She said production was at a record high, and the drug was more available, cheaper and purer than before, despite billions spent trying to stop the trade.
Release also argues that Britain’s emphasis on punishing drug use has stopped services from offering harm-reduction help. For cocaine users, it says, there is almost nothing practical on offer.
Mike Trace, chief executive of the Forward Trust, said the rise should surprise nobody. “We’re facing the perfect storm of record levels of production in South America leading to falling prices combined with increasing purity,” he said. He described the overall death rate as a national scandal.
Will Haydock, chief executive of the treatment campaign group Collective Voice, pointed at funding. He said the government had paused its planned investment programme and held funding at year-three levels. That, he argued, amounts to a real-terms cut while more people are in treatment than ever.
The investment plan grew out of the independent review led by Prof Carol Black, commissioned under Boris Johnson and published in 2021. Haydock called for a new drugs strategy with reducing deaths as a clear priority.
Geography and income matter too. The north-east of England recorded the highest rate of drug deaths overall, at 135.2 per million people. London recorded the lowest, at 58.3 per million. A fivefold gap separated the most deprived neighbourhoods from the least deprived.
Ketamine is also moving the wrong way, from a tiny base. It was mentioned in 115 deaths in 2025, up from 27 in 2020 and seven in 2015.
A report carried by Yahoo News quoted Dr James Morgan of London Metropolitan University, who said total drug deaths have roughly doubled since 2012 and “the numbers remain objectively high”.
The ONS added a caveat. The figures count registrations, not deaths in a single year, so they include some deaths from earlier years. The average delay in registering a drug-poisoning death in 2025 was 209 days in England and 253 days in Wales.
Sources: The Guardian, Great Driffield Radio, Yahoo News, Britbrief, The Daily Telegraph
