Two out of three cocaine samples collected undercover at the Cheltenham Festival this year were found to be 85 per cent pure, a concentration scientists and former government advisers warn is driving a record surge in drug-related deaths across England and Wales.
The test results, obtained by undercover reporting during the four-day race meeting in March, come as official figures show cocaine-related deaths in England and Wales reached a new high of 1,279 in 2024, the 13th consecutive annual rise. Overall drug-poisoning deaths hit 5,565 last year, the highest number since records began in 1993.
What the Cheltenham tests revealed
Journalists used test wipes on surfaces in toilets at the Cheltenham Festival, which attracted more than 200,000 spectators this year. A dozen samples were collected and sent to the Kingston Analytical Services Toxicology (KAST) laboratory at Kingston University. Initial tests detected cocaine in almost every sample. Three were then subjected to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) testing. Two of the three — including one taken from a baby changing facility in the Best Mate Enclosure — recorded a purity of 85 per cent.
Dr Arijac Durrant, a postdoctoral researcher at Kingston University who carried out the analysis, described the findings as “above what we usually see at street level” and warned of a “heightened risk of an overdose for someone taking this drug who is used to taking a lower purity substance”.
The Jockey Club, which runs Cheltenham Festival, said it was “extremely disappointed” and that illegal drug use remained a “wider societal issue” at many major events. The organisers said they had deployed detection dogs, bag searches, pat-downs and amnesty bins at entrances.
National picture: purity, deaths and supply
The Cheltenham findings are part of a broader trend. The National Crime Agency estimated average cocaine purity at “user level” to be between 32 and 38 per cent in 2013. Today, experts say it is routinely above 80 per cent. Peter Cain, a drug science adviser at Eurofins Forensic Services, which tests drugs seized by police, said purity levels reached around 75 per cent during the Covid-19 pandemic and have since risen above 80 per cent. The European Union Drugs Agency reported last year that average purity in half of its member states had climbed to between 66 and 81 per cent.
The surge in purity is driven by record production in South America. The UN’s World Drug Report 2025 found that 2023 saw more than 3,708 tons of cocaine produced, a 34 per cent increase from the previous year, partly due to increased coca cultivation in Colombia. More drugs reaching the UK — via diverse routes that include shipments through eastern Europe, as well as direct sea and air deliveries — means there is less need for dealers to mix or “cut” the product before sale.
According to the National Crime Agency, the wholesale price of cocaine has fallen to “historic lows” because of the glut. Peter Cain described the market as a “buyer’s market”, adding: “Users are getting a stronger product and they’re paying less, and this is at a time everyone else is paying more for beer and other things.”
Wastewater analysis published by the government shows consumption of cocaine in England has risen by a quarter in the past five years. The UK had the largest cocaine consumer rate in Europe in 2023, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Why higher purity is so dangerous
The jump in cocaine purity is the single most dangerous factor for users, experts say, because it makes dosage unpredictable. Someone accustomed to buying a powder that is 30 per cent pure may believe they are taking a standard amount, but if the same volume of powder is actually 60 or 85 per cent pure, the body receives a vastly larger dose.
Mike Trace, who served as the UK’s deputy drugs tsar under Sir Tony Blair and is now chief executive of the Forward Trust, a drug and alcohol support charity, explained: “Higher, unpredictable purity is the biggest risk factor because if somebody buys white powder off their dealer on a Friday night and says, ‘right, well I generally think I get this much of a hit off that substance,’ and if they’re used to getting that much of a hit on 30 per cent pure substance, but if what they bought this Friday was 60 per cent substance, they’re in trouble.”
Cocaine use can trigger heart attacks, strokes and seizures, according to the NHS. Mixing the drug with alcohol further increases the risk of overdose. Professor Harry Sumnall, a substance use expert at Liverpool John Moores University who advises the government on drug policy, described cocaine above 85 per cent purity as “ultra strength”. He said the Independent’s findings indicate a “robust high-purity cocaine market” and warned: “Cocaine markets have never been as risky and as never as harmful as we’re facing today.”
Fatalities linked to the drug have become more common. Among those who died in recent years was Lucy White, a third-year criminology student at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who suffered a cardiac arrest caused by the class A drug. Her sister, Stacey Jordan, has called for changes in education. In December 2024, Emily Rose Browning, a 24-year-old teacher in Cardiff, died after a cardiac arrest hours after taking cocaine on a night out; an inquest heard she likely died due to the “intoxicating effects of alcohol and illicit drug use”. Less than a month later, in January 2025, Lindsey Strickland, 41, died after taking cocaine on a night out in Salford, with a pathologist concluding that cocaine toxicity most likely caused her death.
Hospital admissions for cocaine and crack cocaine use tripled in the decade to 2017-18, the most recent period for which data is available.
Organised crime and seizures
Albanian organised crime groups dominate the importation and sale of cocaine in the UK, according to an independent report by Dame Carol Black, which valued the market at £1.9bn in 2020. The groups, which have direct links to Colombian cartels, are noted for an “end-to-end business model” that connects South American producers to street dealers in Britain. By the end of 2024, Albanian nationals made up more than 10 per cent of the foreign inmate population in England and Wales, costing taxpayers nearly £44 million a year.
Law enforcement efforts have intercepted large quantities of the drug. Last year, five men were caught trying to smuggle cocaine with 89 per cent purity, worth £26.5 million, via a speedboat onto the West Country coast; the 332kg shipment had been dropped by a cargo ship. In the same year, three men were chased down by police on a Cornish beach after collecting bales of cocaine from the sea.
A Home Office spokesperson said border security had been strengthened, with around five tonnes of cocaine seized at a single port in under a month, depriving criminal gangs of more than £400 million worth of drugs. “We will continue to work across health, policing and wider public services to drive down drug use and stop those who profit from its supply,” the spokesperson added.
Expert calls for action
Despite a 10-year drugs strategy launched by the previous government in 2021, real-terms spending on adult drug and alcohol treatment was cut by 40 per cent between 2015 and 2022, according to the National Audit Office. Research from the research briefing indicates that a decade of austerity, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis led 60 per cent of local authorities to cut funding for addiction services.
Mike Trace described the rising death toll as a “health scandal” and called on the government to introduce drug-checking programmes in towns and cities, allowing users to test the purity of what they are taking and to develop a better understanding of the market to inform policy. “Cocaine deaths have been rising every year and we’re not taking it seriously enough,” he said.
Professor Sumnall also advocates a comprehensive approach that includes prevention and care, and has previously prepared guidance on health risk communication strategies for drug-checking services for the European Union Drugs Agency. Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols warned in November that the Home Office was “fundamentally incapable” of dealing with drug deaths, accusing it of showing “hostility” towards solutions that do not involve further criminalisation.
Harry Sumnall, who helps advise the government on drug policy, said: “What The Independent has found is an indication that we have a robust high-purity cocaine market, 85 per cent is very high … I think the reality is that these high-purity drugs are available [across the country] and people can buy them if they want to because they’re affordable.”
