According to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use & Health, exactly 34 million Americans ages 12 and up have tried cocaine atleast once in their lifetimes, representing 14% of the population ages 12 and older. Approximately 5.5 million (2%) have used cocaine in the past year and 2.4 million (1%) have used cocaine within the past month.

The 2005 NSDUH results also show that there were 872,000 people aged 12 or older who have used cocaine for the 1st time sometime during the last 12 months. This is a great reduction from 2002 when there were more than one million past year cocaine initiates.

Of the students surveyed as part of the 2005 Monitoring the Future study, 3.7% of 8th graders, 5.2% of 10th graders, and 8.0% of 12th graders reported lifetime use of cocaine. In 2004, these percentages were 3.4%, 5.4%, and 8.1%, respectively

Health Effects

Cocaine is a strong central nervous system stimulant. Physical effects of cocaine use include constricted blood vessels and increased temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. Users may also experience feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety.

Evidence suggests that users who smoke or inject cocaine may be at even greater risk of causing harm to themselves than those who snort the substance. For example, cocaine smokers also suffer from acute respiratory problems including coughing, shortness of breath, and severe chest pains with lung trauma and bleeding. A user who injects cocaine is at risk of transmitting or acquiring diseases if needles or other injection equipment are shared.

Cocaine is a powerfully addictive drug and compulsive cocaine use seems to develop more rapidly when the substance is smoked rather than snorted. A tolerance to the cocaine high may be developed and many addicts report that they fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first cocaine exposure.

Smoking crack delivers large quantities of the drug to the lungs, producing effects comparable to intravenous injection. These effects are felt almost immediately after smoking, are very intense, but do not last long. For example, the high from smoking cocaine may last from 5 to 10 minutes. The high from snorting can last for 15 to 20 minutes.

Cocaine continues to be the most frequently mentioned illicit substance reported to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) by hospital emergency departments (ED) nationwide. During 2002, it was mentioned 199,198 times and was present in 30% of the ED drug episodes during the year. While cocaine ED mentions were statistically unchanged from 2001 to 2002, they have increased 47% since 1995 when there were 135,711 mentions.

Of an estimated 106 million emergency department (ED) visits in the U.S. during 2004, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) estimates that 1,997,993 were drug-related. DAWN data indicates that cocaine was involved in 383,350 ED visits.