Deaths rose 30% last year, partly due to a rise in purity, but the stigma over drug abuse still stands in the way of funding the means to stop the toll

Compared with the screaming scare campaigns of the 1990s, anti-drugs messaging is thin on the ground these days. So the casual observer may not realise that Britain has, quietly but surely, lost its “war on drugs”. Amid a steep rise in drug poisonings, a particularly striking statistic emerged last week. Between 2022 and 2023, cocaine-related deaths in England and Wales soared by 30%. The figure is now around 10 times higher than in 2011.

And that could be an underestimate. There’s often a time lag of two to three years between drug deaths and the coroner’s assessment on which these statistics are based, says Ian Hamilton, associate professor of addiction at the University of York: current rates are probably even higher. What’s more, not all deaths resulting from cocaine are included. The long-term damage that eventually ends in a stroke or a heart attack will not show up in these reports.