Drug busts 'force up cocaine price'

Trevor Pearce, head of enforcement at the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), said prices per kilo had jumped from £39,000 last year to more than £45,000 as a result of undercover work and seizure operations.

But his findings come amid a warning that UK cocaine's purity level is currently the lowest on record, as gangs use increasing amounts of chemicals like insecticide and worming powder to dilute the drug.

Mr Pearce said: "There is a discernible effect that we are now seeing in relation to the availability of cocaine both in Europe and also across the UK. We are now seeing high-quality cocaine at about £45,000 per kilo wholesale in the UK. That's significantly higher than it has been and has to be indicative of the pressure which the importers are under."

Soca estimates of wholesale cocaine prices two years ago were £35,000, according to the BBC. By the end of last year, the price had risen to £39,000 and in the first few months of this year the price hit the record level of more than £45,000 per kilo.

Mr Pearce said: "We are seeing wholesale prices of cocaine rising across Europe, in Spain and Belgium. We think that is due to a large degree to the strategy of working in South America, the Caribbean, across the Atlantic and with European partners - tackling it in a different way."

Soca, which was billed as the UK's answer to the US's FBI when it was set up in 2006, has come under pressure over the past year to prove its worth.

The agency said its activities in the run-up to Christmas stopped 10 tonnes of street-quality cocaine powder being sold in Britain.

But figures obtained by the BBC suggest almost a third, or 31%, of police cocaine seizures are now less than 9% pure, the lowest recorded purity level.

The data, collected by the Forensic Science Service (FSS), suggests drug gangs are using more and more chemicals to increase the drug's availability on the UK's streets.