COCAINE use in inner-city Sydney and across NSW is the highest it has ever been, outstripping the coke heydays of the early 2000s, new crime statistics show.
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Figures collated by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics for the possession and use of cocaine are 10.5 per cent higher this year than in 2001-02, when cocaine use spiked as the heroin drought hit.
In the 12 months to June 2002, as heroin users turned to drugs such as cocaine in the face of a decline in opium production in Asia, there were 370 recorded cocaine incidents. That figure dropped to 132 the next year but has been rising sharply since early 2006. This year it hit a record high of 409.
"There's unquestionably a problem with cocaine at the moment," bureau director Don Weatherburn said.
"In the lead-up to the heroin shortage there was a huge surge in cocaine and then it dropped. Now it's coming back again."
The amount of cocaine criminals are trying to import into Australia is also growing. The most recent Australian Federal Police annual report says it seized 1.34 tonnes between July 2006 and June this year. This was a huge jump from two years earlier, when 268 kilograms were intercepted.
"We are seeing an increase in [domestic] detection and there seems to be an increase in the amounts coming in from overseas," NSW Police Force Drug Squad commander Superintendent Greig Newbery said.
The sharp rise in the bureau's figures can also be partly explained by new police methods.
"We're seeing an increase in detection but a lot of that is due to police strategy [such as] drug detection dogs and targeted operations," he said, citing as examples raids this year on Oxford Street nightclubs by the Middle Eastern organised crime squad. But Superintendent Newbery said cocaine use represented only about 2.5 per cent of all drug detection in NSW.
The director of the drug and alcohol centre at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, Alex Wodak, questioned the reported rise, saying anecdotal evidence suggested use was not at 2001 levels.
"In 2001 it was very, very obvious, just walking around the [Kings] Cross, you could see people scratching themselves, with huge sores, you'd see people coming into the emergency department," Dr Wodak said.
"We do see people using cocaine and coming to the emergency department [now] but not as many … maybe it's all increased very suddenly."
There were longstanding barriers to high cocaine use in Australia, Dr Wodak said, including difficult supply lines from South America.
The availability of cheaper amphetamines such as ecstasy and ice was also a factor, he said.
