Cocaine use and trafficking in NSW suburbs revealed | Full list

Cocaine use in NSW has skyrocketed over the last decade. Find out the cocaine crime trends in your suburb.

NSW has seen a 350 per cent increase in cocaine possessions in the last 10 years – a cocaine decade in which experts say the middle-class addiction has been passed from generation to generation.

At up to $500 a gram, Sydneysiders pay more than almost any users in the world for cocaine, yet it has spread through our streets and homes at a devastating rate.

Leading criminologist Xanthe Mallet attributes the rise of the drug, not so much to it reaching new markets, but rather the sons and daughters of the original cocaine era now snorting the powder themselves.

“I think we saw society begin to normalise cocaine use more than 20 years ago,” Dr Mallet said.

“Studies have shown when you start using a drug when you are young, you are more likely to keep using it. I think the use of cocaine these days is more multigenerational, with many users aged in their 40s and early 50s as well as the younger users.”

An analysis of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics data shows a 20-fold increase in some areas.

Statewide there were 463 cocaine possession offences recorded in 2011, compared to a staggering 2123 charges laid in 2020.

Waverley Council area, taking in Bondi, recorded 201 cocaine possessions in 2011, which rose to 546 in 2020.

The Central Coast local government area recorded 59 cocaine possession charges last year, in stark contrast to a measly three offences a decade earlier.

Mallet says cocaine use had climbed across the globe as a result of large-scale drug production in South America.

At up to $500 per gram, Sydneysiders pay more than almost any users in the world for cocaine.

Compared to $AU350-$500 a gram in Australia, users pay $64 in Belgium, $91 in France, $132 in the United Kingdom and $134 in Sweden.

Despite the cost of cocaine being so steep in Australia, the criminologist said the white powder remains the drug of choice for Sydney’s elite and high earners.

Watch Australia’s Cocaine Crisis this Sunday at 7.30pm on Sky News.

“It is still more that ‘exclusive’ market for cocaine, and from my experience typically it is the ‘elite’ that use cocaine, often just once or twice a year,” Dr Mallet said.

“This is typically as they can afford these current high prices.”

Proactive policing to combat the dramatic rise of cocaine across the state has also led to higher numbers of drug users being hauled before the courts on possession charges.

Originally published as Cocaine use and trafficking in NSW suburbs revealed | Full list