THE growing problem of middle-class drug abuse in Scotland was laid bare yesterday after a national agency issued a stark warning about cocaine addiction.

Cocaine use has doubled over the past four years, prompting fears that it is replacing heroin as the country’s drug of choice, the Scottish Drugs Forum said.

It also revealed that more users are engaging in a dangerous and highly addictive practice known as “snowballing”, in which cocaine and heroin are taken simultaneously.

In the 1980s Scotland’s battle with heroin earned it the unenviable status as the drugs and HIV capital of Europe.

But Peter Anderson, a drug addiction specialist with the Homeless Outreach Project in Edinburgh, said yesterday that the falling price of cocaine represented an increasing threat. He said that the cost of cocaine in the Scottish capital made it among the cheapest places for the drug in Britain. Cocaine costs around £5 a “wrap” in Edinburgh compared with nearly double that in other Scottish cities.

“We have noticed that the price of cocaine in Edinburgh has fallen dramatically over the past couple of years,” he said. “You can now buy cocaine for somewhere between £40 and £50 per gram in Edinburgh, compared with about £70 to £80 in cities such as Aberdeen.”

Addressing the problem of middle-class drug use, he said: “It (cocaine) is now being used more widely on the recreational scene. It is becoming more readily available in the city’s clubs and bars as it becomes more socially acceptable.

“Some pub and club owners are spraying the toilet tops with WD40 to prevent users from snorting lines off them. This increase in use is very worrying as there is no longer a Berlin Wall between recreational cocaine use and more problematic drug use.”

Cocaine was used by at least 8 per cent of addicts in Scotland in 2004 compared with 4 per cent in 2000, but experts said that the real figure was likely to be even higher.

David Liddell, a spokesman for the forum, which is funded by the Scottish Executive, said that more services needed to be provided to help cocaine users. “Potentially, as we’ve seen in other European countries, we start to see a more substantial shift in that direction, so that the primary drug is no longer heroin but actually becomes cocaine,” he said.

“Cocaine users obviously are potentially paranoid, they’re very concerned about issues of confidentiality and actually want an immediate service.” While heroine users are helped to beat their addiction by taking methadone, there is no substitute for cocaine.

Cocaine use is growing despite the police’s increasing success in taking it off the streets. In the biggest seizure of its kind in Edinburgh, drug squad officers seized £600,000 worth of cocaine at Waverley Station last year.

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