Students at King’s College London have been offered the opportunity to take cocaine as part of a controversial scientific study to examine its effects on the body.

Male participants aged between 25 and 40 were called to take the nasally-administered Class A drug and provide various bodily samples to researchers during seven hospital visits across 120 days.

Talk to Frank labels cocaine as “very addictive” and says it causes “powerful” cravings.  It is thought that these develop because brain processes are altered, and the aim of the experiment is to discover more about how the drug spreads through the body. Having secured the approval of the London Westminster Research Ethics Committee, the study will be conducted under high levels of medical supervision at St Thomas’ Hospital.  

Melissa Griffiths, an undergraduate at KCL, said: “Everyone here was quite shocked... The cash incentive implies that the college is endorsing drug administration, which is inappropriate given the university has a pastoral responsibility.”

Her comments echo those made in 2010 when the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry conducted a ketamine study. Participants were offered cash compensation to take the drug so that researchers could investigate treatments for schizophrenia.  At the time, Rehab Guide spokesman John Mitchell called it a “dangerous game” and one student participant described the experiment as “disturbing,” raising further questions of appropriate pastoral care.

But whilst the safety of experimental drug use and the morality of encouraging such behaviour via cash incentive have been questioned, others have praised such research. Tomur Hairettin, a spokesman for Cambridge Students for Sensible Drug Policy, argued that the KCL study is “nothing but positive” and that the “results of this experiment will only further serve to educate and aid decisions over drug use”. Olivia Oates, academic and welfare officer at Murray Edwards College, similarly commented that such “controlled and supervised experiments” could “better inform future debate over drugs... and their potential legalisation”.

Alex Green, a student at Homerton, pointed out that while the KCL experiment does have ethical approval, this has not always been the case for other studies. Last year’s television programme Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial was funded by Channel 4 after the Medical Research Council refused to offer funding.