people who use cocaine on warm days face an elevated risk of accidental overdose leading to death.

Taking hard drugs is dangerous at any time of year, but new research suggests that people who use cocaine on warm days face an elevated risk of accidental overdose leading to death.The findings could help shape educational campaigns geared toward high-risk chronic drug users, and should serve as a sobering wake-up call to people who treat cocaine as a casual party drug, says Amy Bohnert, research fellow at the National Serious Mental Illness Treatment Research and Evaluation Center of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs“I think in the past five to 10 years, the sense of cocaine use being dangerous has possibly decreased and some people have become less concerned about it,” says Dr. Bohnert, who also works in the psychiatry department at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.The heightened risk of fatal overdose on warm days is due to the fact that cocaine causes the body’s core temperature to rise and impairs the cardiovascular system’s ability to cool it down, the researchers say. The drug also interferes with the body’s natural impulse to feel uncomfortable and cool down when it gets too warm.After examining death reports related to cocaine overdose in New York City from 1990 to 2006, Dr. Bohnert and her colleagues found a relationship between high temperatures and increased risk of death from accidental overdose.Specifically, once the temperature reached 24C, the chance of accidental overdose began to climb as the temperature did.The mean number of cocaine overdose deaths found during the study period was nearly 10 a week.After a detailed analysis of drug data, the researchers found that at least two extra people could die a week for every two-degree increase in temperature beyond 24C.Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998 found a similar relationship between higher temperatures and increased risk of cocaine overdose leading to death. But in that study, researchers found that the risks didn’t start to increase until the temperature reached 31C.

The new study shows that temperature-related risks could be more of a factor in accidental cocaine overdoses than most people – drug users in particular – realize.

Dr. Bohnert would like to see the message about the potential risks incorporated into awareness campaigns for chronic drug users and other high-risk groups.

But addicts aren’t necessarily the biggest worry when it comes to cocaine, she says. “The vast majority of drug users are people who have jobs and who contribute to society.”

Cocaine use has increased dramatically in recent years, and many users fail to see the potentially deadly consequences, she says, adding that the increased risk of accidental overdose in warm weather is just one more reason people should turn away from recreational drugs.

There are also troubling signs that more young people may be using cocaine.

Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health says that in 2005, more than 4 per cent of Ontario students in Grades 7 to 12 reported using cocaine once in the past year.

“My sense is that not many people who use cocaine think about this as a risk,” Dr. Bohnert says.