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Pensioners in their 90s are ending up in hospital for cocaine abuse, shocking new figures reveal.
Fourteen nonagenarians were admitted last year with 'mental and behavioural disorders' as a result of taking the drug – up from four a decade ago.
More than 12,564 people of all ages were hospitalised for mental-health reasons linked to cocaine use. But over the past few years, an increasing number have also been drawing their state pensions as existing drug-users grow older.
According to NHS figures, 67 people aged 60 and over were hospitalised for mental-health reasons because of cocaine use in 2011/12. That has rocketed to 414 in 2020/21.
Professor Adam Winstock, a consultant psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, said: 'One thing these figures tell us is that drug-users in their 80s and above are pretty unusual.
'They are too old to be part of the rave scene [dance music of the 1990s] so they may represent a hidden population who avoided identification and were able to use drugs over a long period of time and still be alive, suggesting they used them in a moderate and more controlled fashion.
'Saying that, 80-year-old hearts are not designed for cocaine, which accelerates atherosclerosis [hardening and narrowing of arteries] and causes constriction of blood vessels supplying the heart, placing people at risk of heart attacks.
'These individuals are likely to be rather unique in other ways and should not be held up to suggest the use of cocaine among older people is safe. Generally it's the young
