Cocaine users in England are hoovering up almost £10billion-worth of the drug a year, a new study has suggested.
Home Office analysis of the amount of six narcotics detectable in the water supply suggest that the South American stimulant is by far the most-used Class A.
It estimated that between August 2024 and July 2025 cocaine with a market value of £9.8million, weighing 132,000kg or 129 tonnes, was used by people in England.
The data also showed where cocaine use was the highest, with Liverpool, Sunderland and Scotland topping the list.
In an additional worrying sign, the horse tranquiliser ketamine was the second most prevalent drug discovered by market value, with estimated use of 30,800kg worth £0.9billion.
Again, Liverpool was a hotspot of use, along with Brighton, Portsmouth, Norfolk and Bristol.
The Home Office’s Wastewater Analysis for Narcotics Detection (WAND) programme found that between 2021 and 2025, the biggest leap in drug use was MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy, up 232 per cent.
This was followed by ketamine (229 per cent) methamphetamine (61% per cent) and cocaine (26 per cent).
However it also found that heroin use had fallen 40 per cent in the same time period.
Wand analysed the water at 50 treatment plants in England and Scotland, allowing it for the first time to estimate drug use on a national scale.
It measures metabolites, by-products of drug use that are excreted in urine.
‘Cocaine is estimated to have the highest consumption and market value, with around 123,000kg consumed between August 2024 and July 2025,’ it noted.
‘This equates to a £9.8 billion market value based on 2025 prices at the retail market level.
It did not test for cannabis due to issues with the sampling method, it said.
It also noted an unusual finding in the way drugs are taken. Samples for cocaine and MDMA were highest at weekends, suggesting their use as recreational party drugs.
But use of ketamine, amphetamines and methamphetamines was constant through the week, the tests found, ‘indicating more regular and potentially problematic use’.
Earlier this week Border Force revealed it had discovered five tonnes of cocaine worth £400million at London Gateway in less than a month.
It included a £256million haul weighing more than an adult rhinoceros that was disguised as banana boxes in a shipping container.
Border Security Command Maritime officers intercepted the three-tonne shipment from Panama bound for the Netherlands on February 27.
The smugglers had gone to extreme lengths to avoid detection – replicating the exact shape and weight of banana boxes to hide the drugs among real fruit in a single shipping container.
A month later, on March 24, cocaine worth an estimated £80 million was seized from a shipping container carrying South American wine.
The quantity of drugs seized by Border Force is up 40 per cent year on year, the Home Office said.
Almost 150 tonnes of illegal drugs were seized in the year ending March 2025 – the highest level since records began.
Meanwhile, cocaine‑related deaths are at their highest level for more than 30 years, with 1,279 registered in 2024.
This is 14.4 per cent higher than in 2023 and eleven times higher than 2011 levels.
