"We're a cocaine nation"
28 07 08 - 04:42 Certainly the statistics tell a story: figures published earlier this year by the magazine Druglink show that the number of drug users being admitted to hospital with cocaine overdoses is four times higher than it was eight years ago. At one London hospital, one in three young men attending A&E with suspected heart attacks were cocaine users — as men are more prone to coronary disease, they seem to be most at risk. Other research, published in the medical journal Circulation, suggests that up to 25% of heart attacks occurring in people under 30 may be due to regular cocaine use, instead of the more typical coronary artery disease.It is familiar territory for the doctors at St Mary’s. Three years ago, a study here showed that more than half of those who turned up at A&E on Friday or Saturday night complaining of chest pains had cocaine in their systems. As one consultant, who did not want to be named, puts it: “We’re a cocaine nation, and while it creates one problem on the streets, we doctors are battling the other front line. You see a guy with chest pains on a Friday night and think, ‘Okay, get the toxicology report.’ Sometimes you can even tell the moment they come through the door.”
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Should such people be left to die? They did it to themselves after all.
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