A new report from the UN has revealed specific dangers facing all cocaine users, including the dwindling purity of cocaine that’s currently being distributed in the UK. The report revealed that the average purity of cocaine in Britain is now 23%, though a third of samples seized were 9% or less. Some wraps were discovered to contain just 4% of cocaine, the Times reported, with ‘animal anaesthetics, (presumably ketamine) being added to give users an effect.

The UN report was published just as British politicians hosted a House Of Commons hearing on the drug at which drug expert Matthew Atha warned of increasing numbers of veteran coke users turning up at hospitals requiring treatment.

“People in their 40s tend to have weaker hearts than people in their 20s – but they still think they’re 20,” Mr Atha, director of the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit told MPs, “People who are continuing to do drugs, when they are getting to those ages, they are more likely to suffer these health consequences,” he warned.

The latest health alert came over 10 years after American doctors carried out the first large scale study examining heart attacks and cocaine use which discovered that the risk of a heart attack is 24 times higher in the first hour after sniffing a line. Cocaine users amongst the 3,900 heart attack survivors examined in the study were found to suffer attacks 17 years earlier than non users, with the average age being 44.