KETAMINE misuse is rising so fast that law enforcement chiefs view it as a threat approaching the scale of armed gangs, cyber attacks and fraud.
Home Office figures seen by The Sun on Sunday show that use of the party drug — also used by vets as a horse anaesthetic — more than doubled in a year, from 10.6 tonnes in 2023 to almost 25 tonnes in 2024.
The findings come from a study of wastewater treatment centres, where remnants of the drug end up.
It indicates a post-pandemic ketamine boom, fuelled by organised gangs exploiting strong demand for the cheap high.
While cocaine sells for £60 a gram, ketamine costs just £10.
We can reveal there has been a big increase in ketamine seizures too, both at UK borders and in communities, with a record 2,046 raids in the 12 months to March 2024.
That is a rise of more than 50 per cent from the 1,337 seizures in the previous 12 months. Hotspots include Liverpool, Norwich and Tyneside.
The 855kg of ketamine confiscated in the past year, with a street value of more than £8million, was five and a half times more than was seized five years ago.
But it was below the record 1,837kg nabbed by police in 2021, when international gangs began smuggling vast amounts into Britain to meet a post-Covid demand.
Highly addictive
But compared with the usage figures, it means just three per cent of the ketamine in circulation was seized — and for every kilo destroyed, 29kg was sold by dealers and snorted by addicts.
Known to users as K or Special K, ketamine makes them feel as if they are dreaming and detached from reality. But it can also leave them confused, nauseated and hallucinating — a state nicknamed a “K-hole”.
Usually snorted in powder form, the highly addictive drug first appeared on UK streets around 20 years ago. It was made an illegal Class B drug in January 2005, when only a recorded two per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds had tried it.
But since 2013 its use among youngsters has rocketed by 231 per cent — making it more popular than heroin, LSD or ecstasy.
Georgia Farnsworth was a 26-year-old mother of children aged six and nine when she was found dead in her bath after taking ketamine.
Her mother Sarah Killingsworth, from Lincoln, said she was shocked by our findings.
Within months of Georgia starting to use the Class B drug, Sarah had to call her every day to make sure she was alive — and once found her “hours from death”.
Sarah, 56, who works with adults with special educational needs, said: “She started using it as an antidepressant, but it did so much damage that she went on to use it as a painkiller. The thought that more and more people are using ketamine is just horrendous. It should definitely be a Class A drug.
“Ketamine took hold of Georgia over about two years. She tried to stop taking it but by then the damage to her body was so bad that the painkillers she got from the GP and hospital didn’t really touch it.
“The only thing that helped her was ketamine — but she absolutely hated it. It works so quickly. You can have it, and then an hour or so later, you appear OK but inside it is ravaging your body.
“It got to the point where Georgia was so incapacitated that she couldn’t get out of bed, but she could still order ketamine from her phone.
“It would be posted through her letterbox. When we found her in bed there was hardly any response from her because she had stopped eating or drinking as it had become too painful for her to pass urine.”
Georgia died in the bath only two days before she was due to check in to a rehab clinic.
Statistics suggest there are now 1.2million people in England and Wales who have tried ketamine at least once.
A law enforcement source with experience in dealing with drug gangs said: “If consumption keeps rising at these rates, it will absolutely be going up the priority list to rival fraud, criminal gangs and other things the police have to deal with urgently.
“Because ketamine has a medical purpose it’s so hard to stop the supply. And because the effects wear off quickly, there’s very little motivation for a user to stop until it’s already too late.”
Policing minister Diana Johnson is now looking at whether to reclassify ketamine as a Class A drug, so dealers who exploit vulnerable addicts could be jailed for life.
The three-year Home Office study of 18 wastewater treatment plants in England and Scotland, conducted by scientists from Imperial College London, tested water samples for several illegal substances, including ketamine, GHB and cocaine.
It showed a serious spike in ketamine use, sparking calls for it to be reclassified as a Class A drug.
The Government review was prompted by the death last June of Jamie Boland, who began taking ketamine, believing it was less harmful than Class A substances.
South Manchester Senior Coroner Alison Mutch, who submitted a Report to Prevent Future Deaths to the Home Office, said: “Maintaining its classification as a Class B drug was likely to encourage others to start . . . or continue to use it under the false impression it is safer.”
Jamie’s parents, Maureen and Jim, from Preston, who support the reclassification, said: “We saw the damage it did to Jamie’s body, and how it completely transformed his life from a happy, sociable, successful business owner to a virtual recluse, in constant pain and suffering from a never-ending need to use the toilet.”
Tracy Marelli, a civil servant from Lincoln who lost her 20-year-old daughter Sophie to the drug last September, said: “Once you’re addicted and you need more and more to get high, it rips your bladder to pieces and kills you. These new stats are the tip of a massive iceberg that is hitting every single part of the UK.
“Ketamine use since the pandemic has rocketed, doctors in hospitals are dealing with the fallout every day, coroners are telling the Government that this evil drug kills, but nothing is being done.”
Some youngsters are misled by the fact that ketamine is used as an anaesthetic in hospitals. Psychotherapist Steve Pope told The Sun on Sunday: “I’ve had some tell me, ‘Well, they use it in operations, so I didn’t think it could hurt me’.
“Ketamine is a silent epidemic because it’s so much cheaper than cocaine. People who want to get high but can’t afford £50 or £60 for a gram of cocaine will turn to ketamine.
“Right now we’re riding the ketamine wave, and that could last for the next ten years.”
Lee Fernandes, head therapist at the UK Addiction Treatment Centres group, said: “Ketamine is going to be the next drug crisis for the UK. It is literally everywhere — in schools, on the streets, and mixed into other synthetic drug cocktails like pink cocaine.
“The number of people we’re treating for ketamine has, for the first time ever, overtaken cocaine admissions, and we fully expect the problem to get a lot worse before it can start to get better.”
Clare Rogers, a 48-year-old midwife from Tamworth, Staffs, whose son Rian, 26, died from the drug in April 2023, said: “Seeing these new stats that usage has rocketed is absolutely shocking, and I’m surprised, but also not surprised.
“The police simply aren’t taking this seriously. When I knew Rian was killing himself with ketamine, I contacted Crimestoppers twice with a massive pile of evidence on his dealer, photographs, phone numbers, addresses, everything. But they did nothing.
“Even after his death they refused to follow it up.”
A National Crime Agency spokesman said: “Every day our officers work with the police, Border Force and wider partners here and overseas to prevent organised criminals bringing illegal drugs, including ketamine, into the country and on to our streets, where they would otherwise destroy lives.”
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