‘popular misconception’ has taken root that cocaine is safe to be snorted at ‘middle-class dinner parties’, the chief drugs adviser says.

Professor Les Iversen, who heads the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, announced a year-long investigation into the harm caused by the Class-A substance.

Prof Iversen said he hoped this would convince the public of the damage cocaine was doing to their health.


Party drug: But Government advisers are keen to dispel the idea that cocaine is safe

It follows concerns over a three-fold rise in the number of cocaine users over the past ten years.

Experts have voiced concerns that the drug is seen as more socially acceptable and glamorous thanks to the likes of Kate Moss, Jodie Kidd, Katherine Jenkins and Amy Winehouse being exposed as users.

 
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Prof Iversen said there was a ‘popular misconception, at least as far as powder cocaine is concerned at middle-class dinner parties, that it’s a safe drug’.

He added: ‘We want to examine whether powdered cocaine really is safe. I do not believe it.’


Socially acceptable? There are concerns that use of the class A drug is tolerable thanks to celebrity use

Last month, the United Nations warned that the UK was becoming an increasingly important hub for the importation of cocaine into the rest of Europe.

Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Spain are the traditional routes for the drug’s entry to the EU, but the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said there had been a recent surge in cases of the UK being used as point of entry.

Powder cocaine was the second most popular drug in Britain after cannabis, British Crime Survey figures for 2009/10 showed.

An estimated 2.4 per cent of adults, about 800,000 people, reported using powder cocaine in the last year.

The ACMD stressed there are no plans to even consider changing the classification of cocaine.

The review will investigate some of the substances being ‘cut’ with cocaine by dealers - which now include dental anaesthetic.

In a separate move, the ACMD controversially suggested giving freed prisoners a ‘magic medicine’ to protect them against heroin overdose.

Advisors say a single injection of naloxone would bring an addict back to life if they fell into a coma.

They want to target newly released convicts in case they fall back into a life of taking hard drugs.

It would cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds to equip criminals with the £15 injections.

But the ACMD, which has repeatedly called for the relaxation of drug laws, said the move could save hundreds of lives.

Prof Iversen said the most vulnerable period in a heroin addict’s life is in the week or two weeks after they leave prison.

One in eight succumb to an overdose and - among those who inject heroin,- one in 200 die, research showed.

Prof Iversen said: ‘A heroin overdose person could keel over and go into a coma and a single injection of naloxone can bring them back to life again. It is really a magic medicine.

‘The issue here is whether or not naloxone could or should be made available more widely so that we can rescue more people from heroin overdose.


Concerns: The United Nations warned the UK was becoming an increasingly important hub for the importation of cocaine into the rest of Europe

‘Issuing naloxone kits to heroin addicts as they leave prison as a way of trying to save some of their lives.’

‘Getting it as widely available as possible is the name of the game.’

The medicine, which would be funded by the NHS, is already made available to freed prisoners in Scotland, under a £500,000 pilot. Small trials are also taking place in England.

Addicts have to be trained how to inject the drug. It must be prescribed to a particular individual.

The scheme has proved controversial north of the border.

Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser said: ‘This sends out completely the wrong message and won’t do anything to move a prisoner towards abstinence, which must be the long-term goal of any drugs strategy.

‘We need to be prioritising drug-free wings in prison and this is the complete opposite of that aim.’

The ACMD has yet to make a formal recommendation to the government, which would then decide whether to fund the scheme in England.