28 mars 2023
It is a report from the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT) which says it: the production, circulation, accessibility and consumption of cocaine have never been so high. With deleterious health consequences.
According to this OFDT report, produced jointly with Public Health Franc and the addictovigilance network, “the circulation of cocaine in the world, in Europe and in France has increased since the 2010s, representing 1/3 of the narcotics market in Europe”. All the indicators point in this direction: record production, record quantities seized… and record number of consumers, thanks in particular to the fall in the price of a gram of cocaine: between 50 and 70 euros.
An “affordable” price, for an overall purer cocaine that can be ordered on the Internet and delivered to your home: these other factors also contribute to explaining the increase in the number of consumers: approximately 600,000 users in France, 3.5 million within the European Union and 21.5 worldwide.
Increase in emergency room visits
Thus, among adults, cocaine consumption increased from 0.3% in 2000 to 1.7% in 2017. “This consumption therefore remains marginal in France in the general population”writes the OFDT, especially when compared to the use of cannabis (10% of the adult population if we use the criterion of consumption at least once a year).
“Nevertheless, the use of cocaine has expanded among adults: rather limited to the festive space and to the most affluent social categories twenty years ago, it has spread to other social environments” with lower incomes. And the modes of consumption have diversified: cocaine is no longer just snorted, it is also smoked, inhaled and injected.
With various health consequences, “ranging from complications (psychiatric, cardiovascular, neurological, infectious, respiratory, etc.) to the risk of overdose (sometimes fatal)”, summarizes the report. Thus, in 2019, cocaine was involved in 12% of emergency room visits related to drug use, compared to 7% in 2015. Mortality attributable to its use has also increased: alone or in combination, it was present in 26% of direct drug-related deaths in 2018. It had never exceeded 20% until then.
To note : In France, cocaine consumption has dropped significantly in recent years among the youngest. If in 2014, 3.2% of minors had already used this drug, they were only 1.4% in 2020.
