Exposed: Cocaine fortunes down pan

THE shocking scale of Britons’ cocaine use is laid bare in a new TV probe.

The investigation shows more than £2million is spent on the drug every week in London alone.

Dr Leon Barron from Kings College London tested waste water plants for traces of cocaine.

His method, which is often used in forensics, tests for the drug in untreated sewage.

His probe found Londoners are snorting £300,000 worth of the coke every day – or £2.1million each week.

Dr Barron said: “We’ve done an analysis of waste water every year since 2011 in conjunction with many other labs across Europe.

“In that time there has been a little over twofold rise in cocaine use.

“In 2016, the data was around nine hundred milligrams of cocaine per thousand people per day.

“If you put that into the context of London with a population of about 8.6 million people that corresponds to about…a little over 150,000 doses per day.”

The figures are revealed in Channel 5’s landmark series on cocaine.

In the next instalment, shown at 10pm tomorrow, it is also revealed how the internet has led to a spike in the number of dealers across the UK.

Dr Adam Winstock, who is head of the Global Drug Survey, said: “I think cocaine crosses all sorts of cultures and economic classes. There are young people who do it as part of a wider passage of going out partying.

“And then I think you’ve got people in their 30s, 40s and 50s doing it as part of going down to the pub or in the workplace. “Delivery and access to coke now is so simple. It doesn’t take very much planning.”

He warned: “If you are out doing a gram every single Friday then you are probably in the top five per cent of users in the UK.”

The penalty for possessing cocaine can be seven years in jail, an unlimited fine or both.