Cocaine found in Royal loos

Ascot racegoers are snorting cocaine in lavatories inside the Royal Enclosure, within yards of the Queen and her guests, the Evening Standard can reveal.

As the most illustrious meeting in the racing calendar celebrates Ladies' Day this afternoon, we can disclose compelling scientific evidence of widespread drug abuse at the heart of the Establishment gathering.

Armed with kits from Scientifics - a forensic laboratory based in Derby - our reporters used swabs to take drug samples from nine lavatories around the course, bottled them and sent them for expert analysis.

Seven out of the nine samples came back from the lab testing positive for cocaine - including five out of six taken from cubicles at the Royal Enclosure, one from near the Greenyard Restaurant in the Paddock area, and another from the Silver Ring enclosure.

The evidence, gathered from the Royal Enclosure at 4.30pm on the first day of the meeting, just as the crowd erupted in joy as favourite Statue Of Liberty won the Coventry Stakes, will cast a shadow over Ladies' Day.

Last year, questions were asked in Parliament when the Standard highlighted cocaine use at Ascot.

Course officials promised tighter security this year, and Ascot does have a bigger police and security presence, with more than 350 officers from Thames Valley Police, 400 ground safety staff and 700 stewards-patrolling the course daily. Chief Executive Douglas Erskine-Crum has promised that anyone convicted of a drugs offence will be banned from the course for life.

But the warning has had little effect.

Our reporters witnessed evidence of drug-taking and were offered cocaine on several occasions in the course of the extended five-day meeting's opening day.

Inside the lavatories in the Royal Enclosure two women emerged, one winking at the other, as her friend whispered: "I can't feel anything."

"Don't worry," her friend replied, "you will soon. This is pure stuff."

The women - in their late twenties - left giggling to rejoin friends outside, clearly delighted they had just snorted lines of cocaine in the "Queen's loo". Outside, the uniformed police and stewards were oblivious to what was going on.

Reporters were also offered the white powder from champagnefuelled City men on three separate occasions. When one man was asked whether he had "coke", he replied: "Coca-Cola or cocaine?" Then he signalled to a friend to come over. "Snowdonia, mate," he said, using one of the drug's nicknames. Turning back to us, he smiled and asked us to get some money. "We'll sort you out," he promised. We returned with cash and he told us his friend was working on it. Half an hour later a rotund, suited City-type emerged from a rowdy group to offer us "some gear".

He produced a folded wrap, cut from a magazine and containing cocaine, and asked if we were interested. We politely made our excuses.

Another banker, in wraparound shades, reacted to our inquiries about the drug by saying: "I haven't got any spare s*** but I know someone who does, if you're interested. The police aren't going to do anything. They don't come into the toilets or check up. They just stroll around outside, it's easy."

The first race was at 2.30pm, by which time many revellers had been drinking at the bars and in the sunshine for four hours.

In the ladies' lavatories in the Silver Ring, however, we could hear the discreet chopping and scraping of a credit card against the porcelain cistern as a racegoer apparently laid out lines of the white powder to snort. Then the cubicle door swung open to reveal a woman in her midthirties. She emerged looking selfconscious and stopped in front of the mirror to straighten up her dress.

Then she sniffed and checked to see if there was any trace of powder left on her nose. We moved in immediately afterwards to take samples of the residue left behind on the cistern-The laboratory tests later confirmed the substance was cocaine.

Back at the Royal Enclosure, the bowler-hatted stewards and uniformed police officers were paying little attention to who entered or left. We slipped unnoticed into the enclosure and made our way to another ladies'. We openly checked every cubicle, finding five scattered with particles of white powder, but the lavatory attendants were too engrossed in a conversation about begonias to ask what we were doing.

By 6pm, the racing was over. Despite many of the racegoers having drunk solidly for up to seven hours, with little more than a sandwich for sustenance, their energy levels remained suspiciously high.

On the train on the way back to London, men and women in their twenties and thirties talked loudly and incessantly and hugged each other as they belted out the National Anthem and Nine Green Bottles.

The signs of obvious drug-taking were there but we wanted to make sure the animated behaviour and the capacity for all-day drinking, as well as the traces of white powder, were evidence of cocaine use.

Yesterday our suspicions were confirmed. James Forster, head of Scientifics' forensic team, came back with the results from our swabs.

He said: "We were sent nine samples from the Evening Standard, seven of which tested positive for cocaine. We can confirm that there was extensive use of cocaine in the Royal Enclosure."

A spokesman for Ascot said: "When you have 55,000 people through the gates every day, some are likely to abuse our hospitality in ways that are not acceptable.

"If anyone gets caught taking drugs at Ascot, they will be banned for life. The very nature of the drug tested for is not something overtly easy to spot. We have teams checking for people who are too drunk or who are taking drugs, but we cannot search everyone or send police officers into toilets."

As our evidence demonstrates for the second year running, today's Ascot crowds are fuelled in growing numbers by something more potent than champagne or Pimm's.

For a new generation of racegoers, cocaine obviously provides even more of a buzz than picking a winner.