Daily Mail - 16.08.2019

Daily Mail, Friday, August 16, 2019 Page 21

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Ephraim

Hardcastle

‘Spectacularly

dangerous’

Email: [email protected]

Humberstone, of the ONS, said:

‘The number of deaths from

drug use in 2018 was the highest

since records began in 1993.’

The drug deaths total is 16 per

cent up on the 3,756 deaths in

2017. Some 2,917 were said to be

doesn’t do them any favours.

Some people use it as an anti-

depressant, and it is not a good

anti-depressant. For older

people, using cocaine is like

putting a supercharged engine

in a Ford Anglia.

‘We are also seeing an upsurge

in numbers of people using

space, one of the drugs once

known as a legal high. People

are vaping space. It is a spectac-

ularly dangerous thing to do.’

A Department of Health

spokesman said drug misuse

was at similar levels to a decade

ago, but added: ‘We are abso-

lutely committed to reducing it

and the harm it causes.’

crack cocaine. But the ONS

said there were ‘reports that

purity levels for cocaine are at

historically high levels, one fac-

tor in the higher number of

deaths involving this sub-

stance’. It added that cocaine

was the second most commonly

used drug after cannabis.

Dr Campbell, consultant psy-

chiatrist at the Priory Hospital

in Roehampton, south-west

London, said: ‘I know of a stu-

dent at a prestigious university

who tried cocaine and ended up

in hospital. She almost died.

‘Everybody wants cocaine.

Middle-class and middle-aged

people like to use it and it really

By Steve Doughty

Social Affairs Correspondent

TEACHER Victoria Buchanan

died in March last year after

swallowing a £60 bag of

cocaine in a first-class lounge

at Manchester airport.

The bag was the remnants

of a 4g package that cost

£200 and which Mrs Bucha-

nan, 42, had acquired dur-

ing a visit to her family in

Britain from Dubai, where

she lived and worked.

Drinking champagne in

the airport lounge, she

decided she would take the

bag with her and smuggle it

into Dubai, which has tough

anti-drug laws. She chose

to swallow the bag, but col-

lapsed moments later when

it burst in her stomach.

At an inquest in Manches-

ter, assistant coroner

Andrew Bridge recorded a

verdict of misadventure,

adding: ‘What on earth was

she thinking?’ Mrs Bucha-

nan’s mother Irene Dignon,

from Kilmarnock, said: ‘We

couldn’t understand why

she would risk something

for such a small amount.’

‘I got a D in politics! Now I hope to form a government of national unity’

Teacher collapsed and

died in airport lounge

parties. But it is very, very bad
for you. It is extremely toxic,
and for older people especially,
damaging to the heart.
‘There is a cocaine epidemic,
but it is very hard to measure,
except by counting the deaths.
These death figures confirm
what we see in practice.’
The surge in cocaine deaths in
England and Wales comes
against a background of a stead-
ily growing toll from heroin and
other opiates.
While deaths continue at a
high rate among the middle-
aged ‘Trainspotting generation’
who have been addicted since a
boom in heroin use in the 1990s,
death rates are now rising
among those in their 20s. Ben

DRUG-RELATED deaths are

at their highest level since

records began – fuelled by an

increase in cocaine use among

middle-class professionals.
A total of 4,359 people died from
drug poisoning last year – nearly
3,000 of them as a direct result of
abuse of illegal drugs.
The Office for National Statistics
said the 637 deaths caused by cocaine
in 2018 was a 100 per cent increase on
the 2015 figure. It follows growing
evidence that the drug has become a
habit among young workers in skilled
and financial jobs and among older
middle-class people.
Psychiatrist Dr Niall Campbell said:
‘Cocaine is cheap and as easily avail-
able as pizza. Older people are using
it as a treat after dessert at dinner

a direct result of drug abuse and

its effects as opposed to acci-

dental poisoning or suicide.

Analysts said it was not possi-

ble to say how many deaths

were caused by fashionable

powder cocaine or downmarket

Inquest: Mrs Buchanan

Middle-class cocaine

binges push drug

deaths to record level

HAS Radio’s 4’s Evan Davis

disclosed a BBC secret? The

corporation is coy about

listening figures – those for

Davis’s PM show being particularly sensitive.

When Eddie Mair left it a year ago to join

LBC, Beeb executives fretted that listeners

would follow him. Now, dismissing Boris

Johnson’s Facebook Q&A, Davis – Mair’s

replacement – said the online exercise

had received ‘just’ 133,000 views. This, he

said, was 10 per cent of the audience he might

have reached by going on PM. Suggesting

PM now has about 1.3million listeners –

somewhat fewer than the 4.2million

claimed by Fast Eddie during his tenure.

THE scandal-prone Duke of York’s contin-

ued attachment to his ex-wife Sarah – this

week flying to Spain by private jet during

the international hoo-ha over the prince’s

troubling friendship with the dead bil-

lionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – is a

perennial topic. There are two perspec-

tives. That the pair are bound together by

simple love for their daughters, Beatrice

and Eugenie. And that Andrew dare not

cast out his ex-wife, lest she be tempted

by large sums of money to discuss her

rocky life inside the Royal Family.

BEWIGGED Tory MP Michael Fabricant,

69, warns critics on Twitter: ‘Those who

make personal comments will be

BLOCKED.’ Yet follically-challenged

Fabricant makes a rude (if quite funny)

personal comment about UKIP leader,

Richard Braine, quipping : ‘The new

leader of UKIP is Dick Braine. At last,

honesty in politics!’

NOW playing Princess

Margaret in the

upcoming series of

Netflix’s The Crown,

Helena Bonham Carter,

53, pictured, recalls:

‘My uncle [former Lib-

eral MP Mark Bonham

Carter] was actually

very close to her. She

was pretty scary.’ Mar-

garet told her once: ‘You’re getting bet-

ter, aren’t you?’ A reference to Helena’s

acting? ‘I presume that’s what she meant,’

says the quirky Ms Bonham Carter.

FIFTY years after the epoch-making

Woodstock concert – actually it was

‘Three Days of Peace, Love & Music’ on a

600-acre farm in Bethel (not the nearby

Woodstock), New York – organisers of the

Isle of Wight Festival, held days later, still

boast about bagging the biggest star. Bob

Dylan, then 28, ‘resented enormously’ not

being asked to perform at home, says Isle

of Wight founder Ray Foulk, adding: ‘We

stole Dylan from Woodstock.’

BROADCASTER Vanessa Feltz’s proud claim

that she’s three-and-a-half stone lighter

and a size 12 gets an unkind response

from some readers. ‘One of us needs to

go to Specsavers,’ says one. Well-nour-

ished Vanessa, 57, insists weight loss has

boosted her confidence with fiance Ben

Ofoedu, 47, confiding: ‘I’ve been able to

get into sexier underwear.’

CHARLOTTE Philby, 35, acknowledges

‘Grampa Kimsky’, whose ‘curious

endeavours’ inspired her first novel The

Most Difficult Thing. Who is he? The late

MI6 bigwig-cum-Russian spy Kim Philby,

who defected to the Soviet Union in the

1960s. Fancy!