Shocking new statistics have revealed an alarming rise in cocaine and heroin use.

A survey of new prisoners showed heroin use had doubled to 30 percent while cocaine use had soared to 57 percent.

The snapshot is taken seriously in the drug counselling world as one of the few reliable indicators of the extent of drug use in Bermuda as not just hard core criminals are tested the sampling includes those showing up at Westgate for short-terms stays for minor offences.During 2004/05 there were 400 tests done on reception, in 2006 approximately 325 receptees were tested.

During that time heroin use has gone from 17 percent of sampled prisoners to 30 percent, cocaine use has gone up from 36 percent to 57 percent while marijuana use had risen by five percent to 57 percent.

However while three in every four new prisoners entered Westgate with drugs in their system in 2004/05, the numbers fell slightly to 64 percent last year.

Drug professionals have already labelled Bermuda as the heroin capital of the wider Caribbean region.

Department of National Drug Control research officer Dr. Ken-Garfield Douglas said Police were reporting increases in heroin seizures while the number of people on the methadone programme for heroin addicts had gone from 80 to 120 in the past three years.Asked for possible reasons for the latest rise Dr. Douglas said people were losing their fear of heroin. Intravenous drug use helped wipe out hundreds of Bermudians in the 1980s and Dr. Douglas feared growing heroin use could end up in a return to shared needles and spark a return of the AIDS epidemic.

He told The Royal Gazette "Marijuana is still the drug of choice but there is an increase in heroin. I think there's probably a perception that heroin is much safer now."My great fear is that heroin use might re-trigger the emergence of HIV. That is always the possibility that persons will become very comfortable smoking it and might then use it intravenously."

That could also open the door to the spread of hepatitis, said Dr. Douglas.

And Sandy Butterfield, executive director of Focus counselling services, said heroin users who kidded themselves they could manage working lives soon found themselves on the slippery slope to physical addiction, illness, job loss and financial ruin. She said the drug was being used by all races and classes.

"There are a lot of people in the labour force, in middle management using heroin, they need it to work and function. People have a hit and go to work."But at $50 for a tiny amount users soon racked up huge debts as they sometimes progressed to a $200-a-day habit.

She said the spread of drug use to the white middle class had been partially masked by the fact that such addicts often went away for treatment even though Bermuda had good facilities.

Mrs. Butterfield questioned why the island was overrun with drugs when it should be the model for the world by stopping importation into such a tiny mass of land.

"It only comes by air or water. It doesn't come in by train or any other method. This should be a place that's drug free.

"Drug professionals have also linked narcotics use to increased likelihood of catching STDs with out of control addicts losing all inhibitions and failing to use condoms.

The last official population survey results showed that only 0.7 percent of the population admitted using heroin or cocaine but researchers believe many of Bermuda's addicts are in denial.