Colorado adults are outpacing the rest of the country in cocaine consumption, according to data released this year by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
According to the agency, in 2021 and 2022, about 3.06% of Colorado adults had used cocaine in the past year compared to 1.95% of adults across the United States.
Colorado topped the list of the 50 states surveyed along with Washington, D.C. Vermont ranked second, with 2.99% of adults having recently used the drug, followed by D.C., where 2.79% of adults engaged in recent cocaine use.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health calculates rates of drug use based on two consecutive years of data, and the agency advises against comparing state-level data collected in 2020 to other years due to changes in how data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar state-level data from 2022 and 2023 has yet to be released.
However, even before the pandemic, Colorado led the nation in adult cocaine use, with 4.46% of adults reporting using the drug between 2018 and 2019, ahead of second-place D.C. and third-place Vermont.
Dale Terasaki, a doctor and addiction medicine specialist at Denver Health, said the popularity of one psychoactive substance versus another in a given place can reflect everything from supply, to culture, to what resources are available locally to treat substance abuse.
He said methamphetamine is more commonly used by patients admitted to Denver Health for health problems related to stimulant abuse.
“It’s not quite as common of a drug,” Terasaki said of cocaine. “But we still outperform other states in that regard, so to speak.”
He also pointed out that Colorado ranked highly among states for the prevalence of substance use in general, including alcohol and cannabis consumption.
As for the health risks faced by cocaine users, Terasaki brought up cardiovascular problems as well as the phenomenon of cocaine being mixed with the opioid drug fentanyl before being sold on the streets.
“Because many of these people don’t normally use fentanyl, they haven’t built up any sort of tolerance to opioids, and they do overdose,” he said.
Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment estimates 269 people overdosed fatally on cocaine in 2021, followed by 256 in 2022. About one-quarter of those overdose deaths occurred in Denver.
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