The price of everything young people need to get ahead in life—housing, food, fuel—just keeps rising. But ketamine, a powerful horse tranquiliser turned party drug, is the exception. It’s cheaper and more available than ever, and it’s leaving a generation of users in nappies. Once limited to clubs and festivals, it is now flooding Britain’s streets at rock-bottom prices.
I started this investigation by examining data from the UK’s Border Force. The goal was simple: to find out just how much ketamine is being seized at ports and airports. What came back was staggering. In 2024 alone, Border Force recorded 2,046 ketamine seizures—up from 1,337 in 2023. The rapid increase in seizures shows just how quickly ketamine is spreading, with experts warning that Britain is in the midst of a ketamine explosion.
And as supply has soared, prices have crashed. An eighth that used to cost £70 now sells for as little as £20, according to one former addict. But while the financial cost has dropped, the physical toll has never been higher. Chronic users are ending up with severe bladder damage, with some forced to wear nappies for life. A judge at Liverpool Crown Court recently warned that young adults in their 20s and 30s are facing this exact fate due to ketamine addiction.
Merseyside has become the UK’s ketamine capital, with drug busts more than five times the national average. North Wales, Lancashire, and Cumbria are not far behind. Experts say ketamine is now everywhere—blended into synthetic drug cocktails like ‘pink cocaine’, readily available in schools, and fast becoming Britain’s next major drug crisis. According to Lee Fernandes, an addiction expert, ketamine is being used by young people who see it as less risky than cocaine or heroin. But the reality is far more dangerous.
Rehabilitation clinics across the UK are reporting record numbers of ketamine addicts. For the first time, ketamine admissions at UKAT’s residential rehab centres have overtaken those for cocaine.
The most famous recent casualty was Friends star Matthew Perry, who drowned in his hot tub after a ketamine overdose. But for many British families, the crisis is much closer to home. The parents of Jamie Boland, a Manchester shop owner who died at 38, have spoken out about how ketamine addiction turned their son from a successful businessman into a recluse, suffering constant pain and an overwhelming need to use the toilet before his death from sepsis caused by a ketamine-related kidney infection.
Public health experts and campaigners are now calling for the government to reclassify ketamine as a Class A drug, alongside heroin, ecstasy, and cocaine. If that happens, dealers could face life in prison, while possession alone could mean up to seven years behind bars. Yet while politicians debate tougher sentencing, ketamine use among young people keeps climbing.
This investigation was published exclusively in the Sunday Mirror on March 2nd 2025. Read the full story below.
