800Cocaine.net

After the 13th annual survey on attitudes about drug abuse released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University found that about 2.3 million children currently use marijuana at least once a month and that more teens say it is easier for them to acquire prescription drugs than it is to buy alcohol, a new survey shows that people aged 18 to 25 are using less cocaine and methamphetamine, but they are using more prescription pain relievers compared to 2006.

The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, resealed by the Department of Health and Human Services, also showed that more American teens who try drugs for the first time continue to use these drugs.

The survey included more than 67,000 participants and it was the nation’s largest survey on drug, alcohol and tobacco use.

From 2006 to 2007, cocaine use among adults decreased 23 percent to 1.7 percent, the report found.

Overall, from 2002 to 2007, the report found a decrease in the rates of adolescent substance abuse for almost every type of illegal drug, including marijuana, cocaine, LSD, Ecstasy as well as prescription drugs. An illegal drug is described as marijuana, hashish, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, and prescription drugs that are not used for medical purposes.

Alcohol use among adults ages 18-25 decreased from 17.6 percent in 2002 to 15.9 percent in 2007.

The report pointed to the association between substance abuse and mental health. 24.3 million Americans aged 18 or older experienced serious psychological distress, the report also found.

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source:  http://www.efluxmedia.com

Tags: prescription drugs, teenagers

Permanent drug seeking and relapse after renewed drug administration are typical behavioral patterns of addiction. Molecular changes at the connection points in the brain’s reward center are directly responsible for this. This finding was published by a research team from the Institute of Mental Health (ZI) in Mannheim, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in the latest issue of Neuron. The results provide researchers with new approaches in the medical treatment of drug addiction.

Addiction leaves detectable traces in the brain: In particular regions of the central nervous system, which produce the messenger substance dopamine, the drug cocaine causes molecular restructuring processes at the synapses, the points of connection between two neurons. As a reaction to the drug, protein subunits are exchanged in specific receptor complexes. As a result, the modified synapse becomes able to transmit nervous signals with enhanced strength – a phenomenon that has been termed ‘drug-induced synaptic plasticity’. Researchers have suspected for many years that drug-induced synaptic plasticity plays a crucial role in addiction development. However, this hypothesis has not yet been proven experimentally.

Using genetic engineering, researchers headed by Professor Dr. Günther Schütz at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now been able to selectively switch off those protein components in dopamine-producing neurons that are integrated into the receptor complexes under the influence of cocaine. Jointly with the team of Professor Dr. Rainer Spanagel at the Central Institute of Mental Health (Zentralinstitut für Seelische Gesundheit, ZI) in Mannheim and the research group of Professor Dr. Christian Lüscher at Geneva University, the Heidelberg researchers studied the changes in physiology and behavior of the genetically modified animals.

The scientists performed standardized tests to measure addictive behavior in the animals. At first sight, both the genetically modified and the control animals displayed the usual behavior under the influence of cocaine. Forced to increase their agility, the lab animals covered significantly greater running distances and preferentially frequented those places where they had been conditioned to be regularly administered the drug.

If normal mice do not find drugs at the familiar places over a longer period of time, their addictive behavior and preference for the cocaine-associated places subside. However, this is not true for animals whose receptor subunit GluR1 has been switched off: These mice invariably frequent the places where they expect to find the drug, i.e., their addictive behavior persists.

Mice whose NR1 protein has been switched off have surprised scientists with a different conspicuous behavior. If control animals withdrawn from cocaine are readministered the drug after some time, addictive behavior and drug seeking are reactivated. In contrast, NR1 deficient animals proved to be resistant to relapsing into the addiction.

“It is fascinating to observe how individual proteins can determine addictive behavioral patterns,” says Günther Schütz, and his colleague Rainer Spanagel adds: “In addition, our results open up whole new prospects for treating addiction. Thus, blocking the NR1 receptor might protect from relapsing into addiction. Selective activation of GluR1 would even contribute to ‘extinguishing’ the addiction.”

In two separate studies, scientists have identified specific cocaine-induced changes in dopamine (DA) neurons that play a vital role in persistent addictive behaviours linked with drugs.

The knowledge behind the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is the key for designing efficient therapy. DA neurons in an area of the brain called the mesolimbic system play a major role in both reward and motivation and are a primary target for abused drugs. But, how drug-induced synaptic changes in DA neurons relate to the development of addictive behaviours is still a mystery.

Scientists have attributed the process of addiction to plastic changes in excitatory glutamate synapses on DA neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA).

Previous research has linked cocaine-induced synaptic strengthening in DA neurons in the VTA with activation of a subtype of glutamate receptors, called NMDA receptors (NMDAR) and with changes in the subunit composition of another type of glutamate receptor, AMPA receptors (AMPAR).

Findings from both studies support the hypothesis that cocaine-evoked synaptic plasticity does not mediate concurrent short-term behaviour effects of the drug but may instead underlie long-term changes responsible for persistent drug-seeking behaviour.

In the first study, Dr. Larry S. Zweifel, and colleagues, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, analysed the link between glutamate signalling in DA neurons and long-term changes associated with drug exposure. They did this by selectively inactivating NMDAR signalling in DA neurons and testing two widely used models of addiction in mice.

It was found that while the stimulatory effects of cocaine on motor activity were unaltered and behavioural sensitization progressed normally, cue-evoked drug seeking and the enhancement of drug craving following withdrawal were significantly impaired in the mice lacking functional NMDAR in DA neurons.

“Our findings support a role for NMDAR-dependent modulation of DA neurons in cue-induced relapse to drug seeking,” said Dr. Zweifel.

In the second study, Dr. Engblom and colleagues from German and Swiss research teams examined the relationship between glutamate signaling and drug-induced behavior using mice lacking the GluR1, GluR2, or NR1 glutamate receptor subunits selectively in DA neurons.

The mice with disturbed NMDAR signalling or AMPAR plasticity in DA neurons lacked cocaine-induced synaptic strengthening but exhibited normal basal and cocaine-induced DA release properties.

But, the researches still saw two alterations in the persistence of drug-seeking behaviour. Interference with NMDAR signalling in DA neurons abolished cocaine relapse behaviour, and deletion of the GluR1 subunit in DA neurons resulted in a specific deficit in extinction of cocaine-induced reinforcement.

“Our findings link NMDAR signaling in DA neurons with relapse behavior and provide a new rationale in the treatment of cocaine addiction. Specifically, the selective activation of the GluR1 subunit could potentially improve the outcome of any given exposure therapy,” concluded Dr. Engblom.

The two studies are published in the latest issue of the journal Neuron.
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source:  Copyright Asian News International

Tags: cocaine, dopamine, neurons

Using a chemical that blocks the creation of memories, scientists have prevented rats from using cocaine after they had become addicted to the drug. The hope is that doctors will one day be able to give humans some version of the chemical and stop cocaine addiction in its tracks.

Barry Everitt, an experimental psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England, focused his group’s efforts on proteins called NMDA-type glutamate receptors in rat brains. Previous work on addiction and post-traumatic stress has shown that these proteins—which are found on the surface of brain cells—are essential to memory formation. The receptors are also crucial to reconsolidating a memory—moving it from its storage area in long-term memory to brain regions that handle short-term memory.

The researchers—who report their findings in the Journal of Neuroscience—put rats in a cage with a lever in it for a couple of hours per day for a week. When the animals pushed the lever, a light would come on and a cocaine solution would be dispensed to the rat. The rats began to associate the light they saw with cocaine.

After a couple weeks of forced sobriety, the animals were returned to the cage. Before going back in, some of the rats received injections of experimental drugs that block NMDA-type glutamate receptors in the amygdala—a brain region that has been implicated in drug-associated memories.

Both treated and untreated animals, when back in the cage, would press the lever over and over again. The light would come on, but no cocaine would be served. Untreated animals continued unfazed, hoping cocaine would eventually come out.

For the treated animals, however, Everitt says, “They press the lever, but it doesn’t do anything, so they stop.” The animals seemed to forget that the light in the cage meant cocaine was on its way for up to four weeks after only a single treatment.

Scientists say that suggests that by disrupting the recollection of a drug-associated memory—a person one abuses drugs with, a place that one uses drugs at, for example—a therapeutic may be able to break the connection between cues in the environment and the need for drugs. Sometimes these cues can be quite close to home—a family member or loved one.

Yavin Shaham, a neurobiologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md., said in a press statement that the new work is an example of “basic research that can be readily translated to the treatment of cocaine addiction in humans.”

With no approved medications on the market to specifically treat cocaine addiction, most treatment regimens rely of behavioral therapy. Often, according to Everitt, these therapies involve exposing addicts to cues that they associate with drug use—but in the absence of the illicit substance. Once a recovered addict encounters these cues back in the real world though, they often relapse. Everitt suggests using an NMDA-type glutamate receptor blocker in the clinic could improve that treatment.

Karim Nader, a behavioral neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, called the new research “promising” for treating addiction, adding that he doesn’t know of a one-time treatment that causes rodents to stop taking drugs for long periods of time.

Everitt notes that while the drugs used in the current study are experimental, there are several drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that target the same receptors: Dextramethorphan, which is found in many over-the-counter cough suppressants and memantine, a drug approved to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, are examples.

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source:  Scientific American

Tags: brain receptors, cocaine, Research

IRISH Euro banknotes in circulation in Spain have one of the highest levels of cocaine traces, a new study has found.

The Irish notes were found to have the third highest level of the drug, after Spain and Germany.

The new research follows a study in the Republic of Ireland in January, 2007, when scientists found traces of cocaine on all the banknotes they tested.

Now chemists at the University of Valencia in Spain carried out an investigation of randomly selected bills in the Iberian country, which had traces of cocaine with an average concentration of 155 microgrammes per note.

Concentration

Spanish euro banknotes had the highest concentration of traces of cocaine of all banknotes in Europe, whether euros, Swiss francs or pounds, according to the study.

“Traces of the drug are found not only on notes that have been in direct contact with it, but on nearly all the notes in circulation,” said Miguel de la Guardia, a co-author of the study and a professor in the Analytical Chemistry Department of the university.

Germany, by comparison, had traces of cocaine five times lower than those in Spain.

Irish euros, by comparison, came in lower still, bearing an average concentration of just 0.576 microgrammes of the study.

The study, published in a scientific journal, Trends in Analytical Chemistry, also reviewed earlier studies of cocaine found on various paper currencies around the world.

In January, 2007, Dublin City University researchers tested 45 used euro notes using the latest forensic techniques and found traces of cocaine on all of them.

Results

The results fit in with scientific findings from other countries such as the UK and Spain where cocaine has also been found on a high proportion of notes.

Cocaine particles stick to the cotton that is contained within the notes.

The study also found that higher value banknotes, such as €20 and €50 euros, were more likely to contain greater traces of the drug.

US dollars have the highest concentration of cocaine of any currency in the world.

A 2006 study found that 94pc of Spanish notes were contaminated with cocaine traces, while other data has shown that between 40 and 50pc are contaminated, while just 6pc of Swiss notes cocaine traces above one nanogramme per note.

Spain is the main entry point for cocaine trafficked into Europe, but the scientists in the latest study stressed it did not mean that almost all Spaniards were using cocaine.

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source:  The herald,  http://www.herald.ie

Tags: cocaine, Traffic

One of Australia’s most experienced drug experts says cocaine and methamphetamine “vaccines” being developed in the US are no answer to the problem.

The research is at the human testing phase for the cocaine version of the vaccine while a similar product targeted at methamphetamine users is reportedly showing good results in animal tests.

But Alex Wodak, who has been the director of St Vincent’s Hospital’s drug and alcohol service for 26 years and is also president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, denounced the trials as a “magic bullet” solution that failed to tackle the cause of drug addiction.

The developments, reported in New Scientist magazine, come after tests by American drug expert Thomas Kosten on a group of more than 100 cocaine addicts keen to kick the habit.

Some participants in the trial were administered with antibodies designed to counteract the effects of the drug and were effectively “vaccinated” against cocaine.

By the end of the trial, in which addicts received five injections of the vaccine over 12 weeks, those who relapsed in their fight to give up the drug simply wasted their money when they took an ineffective “hit”.

Many were reportedly keen to continue taking the vaccine after the trial but were prevented because the drug has not been approved for distribution in the US.

A year on, Professor Kosten estimated that all who had kicked the habit during the trial were “using” again.

While Australia does not have anywhere near the cocaine problem of America, where more than 2 million people use the drug regularly, the trial has sparked interest in Australia for its potential to be used to fight methamphetamine addiction.

The National Drug and Research Centre estimates that one in 10 Australians has tried methamphetamine and about half a million Australian adults use the drug.

But Dr Wodak said any method of curbing drugs that required addicts to seek medical attention to tackle their problem was flawed.

“I am all in favour of having more options. We have too few treatment options. I certainly recognise that,” he said.

“But a minority of people with drug and alcohol problems see clinicians. Only 8 per cent of people with drug and alcohol problem will go anywhere near a clinician in the next 12 months.

“I don’t want to downplay the significance of these people, I would not have a job if not for them, but I also want to make sure there are answers for the 92 per cent of people who never come to a clinician.”

Dr Wodak said Kosten’s product was a typical American attitude towards drugs.

“The Americans just don’t get it, frankly. Drug addiction is a brain disease to these people,” he said.

“They have the worst drug problem in the world and they go around telling the rest of the world, particularly poor countries, how they should run their drug programs.

“What’s not mentioned is that a lot of the people using and selling cocaine live impoverished lives, they are often from minority populations and they use drugs like cocaine to make their miserable lives less miserable.

“Good luck to [Kosten] but that’s not the direction I would choose.”

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source:  Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au

Tags: cocaine, Research, vaccine

New research has uncovered a fundamental cellular mechanism that may drive pathological drug-seeking behavior. The study, published by Cell Press in the July 31 issue of the journal Neuron, examines the brain’s reward circuitry and details strikingly distinct influences of self-administered cocaine compared to natural rewards or passive cocaine injection.

Dopamine (DA) neurons residing within the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain are a key part of the brain’s natural reward pathway and have been implicated in mediating many types of motivated behaviors. It is well established that the VTA DA neurons can express plasticity of excitatory glutamate synapses in the form of long-term potentiation (LTP), a widespread form of cellular plasticity thought to underlie learning and memory processes.

The VTA DA neurons have also been linked with drug addiction, but the cellular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are not well understood. “While usurpation of learning and memory processes may support persistent seeking of abused drugs, common synaptic mechanisms of natural and drug reinforcement have not been demonstrated,” says study author Dr. Antonello Bonci from the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Bonci and colleagues demonstrated that self-administration of cocaine produced a potentiation of VTA excitatory synapses that persisted for three months after abstinence and was still present after three weeks of extinction training. This finding may be relevant to relapse in humans as potentiation persisted even when drug-seeking behaviors were extinguished. In contrast to self-administration of cocaine, self-administration of natural rewards, such as food or sugar, induced a potentiation of VTA glutaminergic synapses that was equally potent but quite short-lived.

Interestingly, rats that received repeated passive injections of cocaine did not exhibit potentiation of VTA glutamatergic function, suggesting that cocaine-associated changes were due to an associative process and not just to the pharmacological effects of the drug. “We suggest that neuroadaptations induced specifically by drug self-administration may form a powerful ‘memory’ that can be activated by drug-associated cues,” explains coauthor Dr. Billy T. Chen.

How self-administration of a drug but not a natural reward can elicit enduring changes within the brain remains a mystery. “Future studies are required to identify the exact mechanisms through which drugs of abuse alter neural circuitry that is normally accessed by naturally reinforcing events but is usurped by cocaine to persistently cement these synaptic adaptations, perhaps ultimately leading to pathological drug-seeking behavior,” concludes Dr. Bonci.

The researchers include Billy T. Chen, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; M. Scott Bowers, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Miquel Martin, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; F. Woodward Hopf, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Anitra M. Guillory, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Regina M. Carelli, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; Jonathan K. Chou, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; and Antonello Bonci, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA.

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source:  http://www.redorbit.com

Tags: behavior, cocaine, dopamine

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has urged the US to give longer prison sentences to drug traffickers extradited from his country.

He said that negotiating short jail terms with traffickers in exchange for information often ended up making a mockery of anti-drug efforts.

Mr Uribe was speaking at an anti-drugs summit of Latin American leaders in the north Colombian city of Cartagena.

Correspondents say it is a rare rebuke from such a strong US ally.

Tags: Columbia, extraditon

West Africa is under attack. The region has become a hub for cocaine smuggling from Latin America to Europe. States that we seldom hear about, such as Guinea-Bissau and neighboring Guinea, are at risk of being captured by drug cartels in collusion with corrupt forces in government and the military.

With the exception of cannabis in Morocco, Africa never used to have a drug problem. That has changed, however, in the past five years. Around 50 tons of cocaine are being shipped from the Andean countries to Europe via West Africa every year — and that is a conservative estimate. Actual amounts could be at least five times higher. The volume seized is rising sharply: from 266 kilograms in 2003, to 3,161 in 2006, to 6,458 in 2007. This steep increase will no doubt continue. This month alone, more than 600 kilos were seized in a plane with fake Red Cross markings at the airport in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and at the international airport in Bissau, several hundred boxes were unloaded from a jet.

The profiteers in this illicit trade — mostly but not only Latinos — stand out on the streets of West African towns. They drive luxury cars, buy up the best hotels and are building haciendas and other opulent examples of “narcotecture.”

Law enforcement has been helpless against this onslaught. Drug planes don’t have to fly below the radar, because in most cases there is no radar (or electricity). Soldiers sometimes help smugglers by closing airports and unloading the cargo. Police cars run out of gas when giving chase or are left in the dust by smugglers’ all-terrain vehicles. There are no local navies to intercept the ships coming from Latin America or to chase the 2,000-horsepower boats that speed drugs up the coast to Europe. Traffickers are seldom brought to trial; in some cases, there are no prisons to put them in. Even when they are charged, they are usually released because evidence is not collected or needed laws are not in place.

Drugs have become a security issue. Drug money is perverting the weak economies of the region. In some cases, the value of the drugs being trafficked is greater than a country’s national income. The influence that this buys is rotting these fragile states; traffickers are buying favors and protection from candidates in elections.

Quick intervention by the international community five years ago prevented a crisis in Cape Verde, but the cartels merely shifted their operations to Guinea-Bissau. Now Guinea is under threat; Guinea’s neighbor Sierra Leone could be next. Without a regional response, the problem will move from country to country.

Containing this threat will not be easy. Poverty is the biggest problem. These countries are the worst performers on the human development index — their populations at the bottom of the “bottom billion.” Unemployed and desperate youths are vulnerable to being recruited as foot soldiers for criminal groups. West African countries must take control of their coasts and airspace. This requires hardware (boats, planes and radar), know-how (investigative techniques and container security) and counter-narcotics intelligence. Some of these capabilities can be developed nationally, but some assistance will have to come from abroad.

Cooperation among customs officials, border guards, the police and counter-narcotics agents — at ports and airports, for example — has made Cape Verde a less attractive transit point for drug traffickers. The same approach should be adopted elsewhere.

Because the drug trade defies borders, regional cooperation is vital, particularly intelligence-sharing. Stronger legal cooperation among West African nations would enable more effective extradition, mutual legal assistance and confiscation of the proceeds of crime. Working contacts must also be strengthened between countries of origin and destination, in South America and Europe, respectively.

In some cases, mechanisms for intelligence-sharing are under construction. But measures, and even laws, to fight organized crime and corruption will be meaningless without the political will and capacity to implement them. Too often, drugs that are seized disappear instead of being destroyed. Judges, police and witnesses are intimidated. Security forces turn a blind eye or lend a hand to smuggling.

The highest authorities must recognize the stakes. Their failure to act is a sign of helplessness or complicity. Political will would be strengthened if regional leaders were rewarded for their integrity and punished for corruption. At the moment, the honest ones feel abandoned and the crooked ones act with impunity. We must reduce vulnerability to drugs and crime with greater development. And greater justice would build faith in the rule of law.

West Africa’s drug trafficking problem is still relatively small compared with that of West Asia, the Caribbean or Latin America. But it is growing exponentially and threatens to turn the region into a center of lawlessness. Such instability is the last thing Africa needs. The affected countries and the international community must act before the situation spirals out of control.

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Antonio Maria Costa

The writer is executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Tags: africa, Traffic

Cocaine overdoses are four times higher than they were eight years ago - and A&E departments are clearing up the mess

It is 1am on a balmy night in one of the ritzier enclaves of west London, and at a four-storey Georgian terrace a party is in full swing. In the Philippe Starck-designed kitchen and imposing double-height living room, the thirtysomething guests — City bankers, yummy mummies and trustafarians — are engaged in animated chatter, while some are occupied by a raucous game of Twister. High spirits are buoyed by a plentiful supply of amphetamines and Colombia’s finest white powder. The mood is boisterous.

Then, one of the guests collapses on the floor, clutching his chest. One hour later, 38-year-old Max is in intensive care at St Mary’s hospital, recovering from a severe heart attack. The consultant should be baffled by the spectacle of this seemingly healthy, lithe man in his prime suffering such a dramatic collapse, but he has seen it all before: toxicology reports reveal a high level of cocaine in Max’s blood, the legacy of the rowdy party just a few hours earlier. Max will make a full recovery, but he is told that if he takes the drug again, he could be signing his own death warrant.

It sounds extreme, but ask any doctor at the sharp end of A&E admissions and they will tell you that it is not an uncommon scenario: in recent years, many of Britain’s hospitals have seen a huge increase in what the white coats privately call “cocaine toxic” or “coke strokes”. The symptoms: at the “lighter” end, hallucinations and disorientation; at the severe end, acute chest pains, heart attack and stroke. The link is cocaine use, even if it is just a few cheeky lines at weekends.

Certainly the statistics tell a story: figures published earlier this year by the magazine Druglink show that the number of drug users being admitted to hospital with cocaine overdoses is four times higher than it was eight years ago. At one London hospital, one in three young men attending A&E with suspected heart attacks were cocaine users — as men are more prone to coronary disease, they seem to be most at risk. Other research, published in the medical journal Circulation, suggests that up to 25% of heart attacks occurring in people under 30 may be due to regular cocaine use, instead of the more typical coronary artery disease.

It is familiar territory for the doctors at St Mary’s. Three years ago, a study here showed that more than half of those who turned up at A&E on Friday or Saturday night complaining of chest pains had cocaine in their systems. As one consultant, who did not want to be named, puts it: “We’re a cocaine nation, and while it creates one problem on the streets, we doctors are battling the other front line. You see a guy with chest pains on a Friday night and think, ‘Okay, get the toxicology report.’ Sometimes you can even tell the moment they come through the door.”

People such as Max are, of course, not the most obvious of drug casualties — or menaces, for that matter. He is not on the rampage, beating up police officers or stealing people’s home-entertainment systems to fund his habit. A married father of two, who annually earns close to seven figures in the City, Max’s demeanour had previously radiated the glow of invincibility common to those who have the lot — the wife, the kids, the house, the car and the monster pay packet. He stayed fit and saw his prodigious weekend cocaine and amphetamine use as no more threatening to his health than a few tequila shots after work. “I’m not untypical of the guys I work with,” he says. “I wasn’t an addict. I live a stressful life, and I wanted to get high at weekends. I didn’t see it as a big deal. It was pretty much par for the course.”

The problem, though, is that getting high at weekends can put huge strain on the heart: cocaine, in particular, constricts the blood vessels, raising blood pressure and making the heart work harder. Throw in alcohol and amphetamines, and you have what some doctors believe is a “ticking time bomb of acute cardiac problems”.

One of them, Dr Murray Mittleman of the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Harvard, was among the first doctors to carry out a large-scale study of the link between cocaine and heart disease. He feels that we are only scratching the surface in terms of establishing the dangers. “We know that taking cocaine significantly increases the risk of heart attack in individuals who are otherwise at low risk,” he says. “There is a magnitude of heart-disease risk associated with cocaine use, but more research is needed.”

Jamie, a 35-year-old management consultant from Manchester, found out the hard way. Last year, he was admitted to hospital with acute chest pains after collapsing in a bar in the fashionable Canal Street area of the city, and discovered he had suffered a stroke. He is now an avowed abstainer from his previous drug of choice. “I would never in a million years have put myself down as at risk from heart problems at a young age,” he says. “There is a history of coronary disease in my family, but we’re talking men in their fifties and sixties. I was all about the gym and healthy eating, but at weekends, I would party hard. That was enough to put my body under strain. At least I got a warning.”

Dr Sue Paterson, a consultant forensic toxicologist at Imperial College London, has noticed the increased prevalence of cocaine in toxicology samples that have come across her pathology table in the past 20 years — particularly since the department has started testing hair follicles, which demonstrate longer-term cocaine use not detectable in blood or urine samples. “Certainly, our capital city is awash with the drug,” she says. “It’s a huge problem across the social spectrum. My experience suggests that, if anything, the statistics concerning usage are an underestimate.”

Max agrees. These days, he still likes to “get high”, but sticks to wine and vodka, in moderation. It’s not easy, because those weekend parties he attends on occasion are still, by and large, a narcotics free-for-all. “The attitude seems to be that I was just unlucky, a blip,” he says. “The coke and ecstasy still get passed round like Smarties.” And in those moments, it seems, the statistics count for little.

National Drugs Helpline; 0800 776600. British Heart Foundation; 0845 070 8070

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source: Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Tags: cocaine