British police are recording a growing number of crimes linked to cocaine, including assaults, domestic abuse and dangerous driving, as figures show consumption has surged across England.
A Guardian investigation has found police forces across Britain recorded a 10% rise in crime rates associated with the class A drug since 2019, while the Home Office estimates cocaine usage at sites across England has risen by 26% since 2021.
Cocaine is a powerful and addictive stimulant that causes euphoria, overconfidence, restlessness and paranoia. Experts have warned its use can cause already fraught situations to escalate, potentially leading to violent incidents.
The rise in consumption in recent years can be partly explained by historically low costs, while purity levels have remained high. Analysis of wastewater suggests people in England consumed 123,000kg of cocaine in 2024-25. That’s equivalent to roughly 2.5bn lines of cocaine, at an estimated street value of almost £10bn.
Police recorded at least 29,922 crimes mentioning the word cocaine in 2025 – equivalent to 63.4 for every 100,000 people. That was up from 57.7 cases for every 100,000 in 2019. Figures up to May this year suggest that number could increase again in 2026 to about 64 cases in every 100,000 people – a rise of more than 10% over seven years.
Martin Gallagher, an author and organised crime expert who served as a police officer in Scotland for 28 years, said cocaine use had become normalised: “It went from being the drug of the social elite to being something taken off the cistern of a toilet in a local pub.”
A majority of cocaine-associated crimes last year were drug offences – but 18% were violent crimes, including stalking and harassment and one murder case. Just under 4% of crime reports mentioning the word cocaine were sexual offences, including 344 rapes.
Graph on showing rise in crimes mentioning cocaineRecorded crimes mentioning cocaine per 100,000 people.
Separate figures highlight cocaine’s role in domestic abuse cases. Nearly six in 10 police drug tests carried out on people arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse were positive for cocaine between July 2025 and June this year.
The data, drawn from the Home Office’s drug test on arrest programme, is not representative, as some tests were only taken after police already suspected drug use. However, the results tally with a 2023 pilot study that found 59% of domestic abuse suspects tested positive for cocaine or opiates.
Harry Sumnall, a professor in substance use at Liverpool John Moores University, said: “Scientific reviews have found no strong evidence that cocaine directly induces violent behaviour, but domestic violence is often rooted in power, and both perpetrators and survivors describe cocaine intoxication escalating loss of control and jealousy, leading to violent incidents, and making existing abuse more frequent and more severe.”
He cautioned that a mention of cocaine in a crime record did not prove the drug had caused the offence.
Cocaine went from being ‘the drug of the social elite to being something taken off the cistern of a toilet in a local pub’. Photograph: Andriy Popov/Alamy
Separate DVLA data obtained by road safety charity IAM RoadSmart found that drug-driving offences overtook drink-driving offences for the first time last year. There were 30,707 drug offences added to driving licences (up by 28% since 2022), and 29,769 drink-driving offences (down by 17%) in 2025.
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Government figures suggest that cocaine and cannabis are the most common illegal drugs involved in road fatalities. Figures obtained by the RAC suggest that drug-drivers are far more likely to reoffend than drink-drivers – meaning a smaller subset of repeat drug-drivers could be behind the rise.
Paul Court, a deputy chief constable who is deputy lead for drugs for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, warned that demand for illegal drugs sustained a “highly profitable criminal market built upon violence, exploitation and intimidation”, and that police enforcement alone was not enough to solve the problem.
An independent report last year by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs found that the UK lacked a coordinated drug prevention strategy with dedicated funding – despite international evidence showing drug prevention programmes work.
Court added: “We have to reduce demand, prevent people being drawn into drug use in the first place, reduce harm and ensure those whose offending or vulnerability is linked to drug dependency have opportunities to access treatment and support.”
The Guardian contacted all 45 police forces in the UK under the Freedom of Information Act requesting figures for crimes mentioning the word cocaine. Of these, 39 responded with data. Not every force had records for each year or a breakdown of the types of crime associated with the drug. London’s Metropolitan police were not able to provide any data.
Data was taken from keyword searches of police summary notes, so do not necessarily mean that cocaine formed part of the offence. The figures may include some crimes tangential to the drug – for example, if a witness stated someone was known to use cocaine. Other crimes, where the drug was misspelled or mentioned in a different part of the notes, may be missing.
