ONE in 10 Scottish teenagers over the age of 16 is now taking cocaine as the cost of the illegal drug has fallen following record harvests in South America.
The extent of the cocaine crisis among the country's youth is revealed today in two surveys compiled by police and by drugs, health and education experts for the Scottish Government.
Police chiefs are also warning that a combination of cheap cocai
ne and alcohol is putting a new generation at risk of serious health problems.
The deadly cocktail is now more readily available than ever before because teenagers from all class groups are pooling their money – meaning a single hit of the drug costs as little as £5.
Combining the narcotic with drink prolongs the effect but puts users at a high risk of suffering a heart attack. Some medical studies suggest that the combination has more of an effect on the heart than cocaine alone.
The Scottish Crime and Victim Survey and the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyles and Substance Use Survey reveal that 13.2% of 16 to 19-year-olds have taken cocaine – 10.4% in the past year.
More than 6% said they had taken cocaine in the month before the surveys were compiled and 48% said drugs were easy to obtain.
The availability of the Class A drug has increased following a bumper coca leaf harvest in South American supply countries such as Columbia, Bolivia and Peru.
Scotland has the third-highest cocaine usage of any country in
Europe and experts fear the situation will only get worse as more and more youngsters start experimenting with the illegal drug.
Teenagers are clubbing together to buy a gram of cocaine for around £50. This can be used to provide up to 10 'lines'. Any money left over can be used to buy alcohol, which prolongs the effect of the drug.
Scientists have discovered that drinking after using the drug produces a chemical, cocaethylene, which allows an individual to consume three times as much alcohol as they normally would without becoming incapacitated.
However, it also means that the user is much more prone to violent outbursts as the drink and drug combination gives them an enhanced sense of 'invincibility'.
It also increases the risk of a heart attack by up to 24 times.
Susan Dean, a spokeswoman for the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the trend of mixing the two substances was "particularly worrying".
She explained: "It appears that taking cocaine allows people to drink much more than they could normally tolerate.
"But that combination forms a chemical which can lead to sudden death through cardiac arrest. The combination is also causing people to become more aggressive."
Detective Superintendent Willie MacColl, the National Drugs Co-ordinator for the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said the health risks of taking cocaine, particularly with alcohol, were only just being appreciated.
He said: "It can be extremely dangerous to mix different drugs, and this includes taking a drug and drinking alcohol."
One reformed addict, who now works for Glasgow-based Cocaine Anonymous, said the age of users was falling.
"The users are getting younger and younger and they are now starting off by getting the drug off older brothers or friends." He added that the major problem when taking the drug was combining it with alcohol. "If you take cocaine, you drink more, much more," he said. "That is what makes people feel the way they do – invincible.
"But the next thing they know, they are waking up in a cell after killing someone and their life is over.
"That is if they do not kill themselves trying to be some sort of Superman."
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said it had already begun to implement a programme aimed at reducing the number of youngsters who were using cocaine.
He added: "Cocaine is not glamorous. It is an illegal, Class A drug which has serious health risks and can destroy lives and we have set up an expert working group to review psycho-stimulant use – including cocaine – in Scotland.
"The group is looking at the scale of the problem, including links between cocaine and alcohol, and will make recommendations on the best way forward to tackle these problems. It is due to report in early summer."
The surge in cocaine availability comes despite a series of high-profile police operations aimed at severing the supply line. Last week, a man was jailed for more than five years after being caught with one of the biggest-ever seizures of the drug in Edinburgh.
Police found six kilos of cocaine, worth around £300,000, after stopping Thomas Harvey as he returned to the capital from Merseyside.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard the 42-year-old had agreed to act as a courier to pay off drug debts accrued by his son to dealers in Liverpool.
On Friday, 19 people were sent for trial in connection with a suspected £100m drug cartel.
They were charged with drug and money laundering offences after being arrested in dawn raids on more than 30 addresses in London and the Home Counties on Wednesday.
Several guns and about 110kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of £5.5m, were recovered by officers.
'Heroin is a dirty drug. Cocaine is just a lot cooler'THREE teenagers in three towns across Scotland, and all with depressingly similar stories. If Alastair, Calum and Patrick – not their real names – are to be believed, the class A narcotic cocaine is more widely available across the country than ever before and penetrating every level of society.
Cocaine may once have been the party drug of choice for the moneyed classes, but with plentiful supplies arriving in the country after record coca harvests in South America, it is becoming more affordable to youngsters from a variety of backgrounds and more popular.
One lives in a Highland community, another in a quiet loch-side town and the other in an urban tower block. With prices now falling to below £50 a wrap (up to 10 lines), the drug is within reach of more young people, at an earlier age, than ever before.
All three now use cocaine bought by sharing money between friends to obtain the drug. Equally disturbing, all know that combining cocaine with alcohol intensifies and prolongs the 'buzz' they gain from taking the drug.
What they do not know is that, according to medical experts, combining cocaine and booze results in the liver creating a chemical, cocaethylene, that extends the drug's effect on the body but also inflates their chances of suffering a serious heart attack. Some studies suggest cocaethylene may have a higher cardiovascular toxicity than cocaine alone.
None of the three had heard of the risks of mixing cocaine and alcohol, yet with their lifestyles, they are all at extreme risk of causing serious and lasting harm to themselves, as well as others around them. These facts are lost on the trio – two of whom say they would never consider using heroin, but all of whom seem to think the pleasures outweigh the risks.
Alastair comes from a middle-class family in Aviemore, which sits amid the rural splendour of the Cairngorms National Park. Aged 17, he has been using cocaine for about a year, progressing from cannabis and Ecstasy. A fall in the quality of the tablets meant he wanted other options.
He explained the easy economics of his growing habit. "Cocaine is easy to obtain," he said. "My mates all use it, and if we put in a fiver each, we can have a line and then top it up with cheap cider.
"The cider seems to help the cocaine keep going somehow."
Alastair and his friends buy their cocaine from a local dealer, who used to supply them with Ecstasy. The price has remained static for months and they do not have any problem in obtaining it.
Alistair's story is echoed by Calum, who lives in Balloch on the south shore of Loch Lomond.
He has only been using cocaine for a couple of months, and apart from the odd smoke of a cannabis reefer, had never previously used any illegal substances.
But following a number of nights out with his friends, who were already taking the drug, he finally succumbed.
Calum, 16, said: "I watched my mates take it and they did not seem affected by it, apart from being happy and having a laugh.
"Eventually, I said yes, and at first did not think anything of it, but after a few lines and a couple of beers, I just felt nice. I wake up the next day and I don't have a hangover or feel sick."
Calum also chips in with his friends to buy a gram of cocaine at weekends from a dealer in nearby Dumbarton.
Like many other teenagers, he does not believe the narcotic carries the same stigma as heroin.
Calum added: "I would never, ever inject. Heroin is a dirty drug used by smackheads. It's something I have never tried and never would. Cocaine is just a lot cooler."
It is an argument with which Patrick probably agrees, but one that does not really enter his equation for taking the drug. The 16-year-old lives in Bridgeton in Glasgow's East End and is the latest member of his family to become a regular hard-drug user.
His mother and older brother are heroin addicts, who thought nothing of letting Patrick watch as they smoked the narcotic, even though he was little more than a toddler.
Patrick said: "I do cocaine because I can use it to top up the heroin. They call it 'snowballing'. It just gives you a better and longer high. I had done everything before cocaine. Cannabis, Ecstasy, glue, whatever. It was cocaine and then crack. It's like all drugs here – there's loads of it and it's cheap. And of course, there's the bevvy too. It all helps you just get steamin'."
Patrick does not know how much he spends each week on cocaine, but he funds his habit in one of two ways: either shoplifting or simply "ripping off" other users.
He said: "It is simple. It's me or them. They'd do it to me and so I do it to them first. I spend everything I have on gear and will do anything I can to get it.
"You can get coke in Glasgow for as little as £40 a gram if you know who to deal with and they know you."
A glut in the marketThe global deluge of cocaine is being fuelled by record harvests in South American countries led by Columbia, Bolivia and Peru, despite a $5bn US government-sponsored campaign to destroy the crops.
Between them, according to the US Department of Justice's National Drug Threat Assessment 2008, they produced 970 metric tonnes of pure cocaine last year.
The processing of the coca leaves is carried out using hydrochloric acid in a sophisticated laboratory system. Once ready, the drugs destined for Europe are usually shipped out of Venezuela hidden amid legal cargo on its way across the Atlantic to Spain or Portugal.
The Iberian peninsula is now Europe's main recipient of cocaine from the South American cartels. It is then transported overland, mainly by truck across the English Channel and into the UK.
Although there is no actual shortage of high-purity cocaine in Britain, the dealers make the drug even more available, and profitable, by "cutting" it with other, cheaper materials, including benzene, aspirin, dog-worming tablets and bicarbonate of soda.
It means a single kilo of cocaine can, when mixed with other ingredients, double in weight. A "wholesale" kilo will sell for around £35,000, but when adulterated with other substances, profits can more than treble.
A single wrap currently costs around £50. This can then be divided into up to 10 lines.
The dangersTHE dangers of mixing cocaine and alcohol have only become evident in recent years as scientists have analysed their impact on long-term users.
The main risk is caused by a chemical called cocaethylene, which is produced by the liver when a mix of the two substances is taken.
Cocaethylene is believed to increase by 24 times the possibility of a user suffering a heart attack, but it also has another harmful effect: it enables users to consume up to three times more alcohol than they usually could yet still remain relatively 'sober'.
This means that an individual who was already high as a result of taking cocaine would drink much more alcohol, greatly increasing the potential for violence.
A recent report by the campaign group Glasgow Council on Alcohol focused on the risks of combining cocaine and drink, and concluded they are potentially lethal within a relatively short period of time
A one-time cocaine addict, who now works for Cocaine Anonymous in Glasgow, said: "If you have seen the current TV advert with the guy who has been drinking, trying to show off to the girls and who ends up plunging from the scaffolding, that is what combining coke and drink does. That is just what it makes you feel like. You can do anything, take on anyone. You are number one."
LEADER: A new line on cokeThe full article contains 2221 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
