NOT to mention that the supply and the price of cocaine, about $25 to $30 on the street for a half-gram bag, have remained stable for several years, said John Galea, director of the street studies unit of the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services. (In rare cases, a large bust can affect prices. Chief James P. O’Neill, the commanding officer of the New York Police Department Narcotics Division, said the authorities seized a record 20 tons of cocaine off the coast of Panama in March, and wholesale prices rose in the last few weeks.)

A prevalence among young people is not entirely borne out by national statistics. According to an annual survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, lifetime cocaine use remained stable between 2002 and 2005 among 18- to 25-year-olds. (Data before 2002 are noncomparable.) But the study — which estimates national rates based on a poll of 67,500 people — recorded a 20 percent increase in past-month use among that age group in 2005 from 2004, the last period for which data were available, said Joe Gfroerer, the group’s director of the division of population surveys. (There was no change in usage rates among people over 26.)

The Police Department has not recorded an increase in drug-related arrests at clubs recently, Chief O’Neill said. But, he added, “It doesn’t mean if you’re doing drugs in a club you won’t get caught.”

But in interviews over the last five months with people in the night-life, entertainment, media and finance industries, all said that cocaine is a prominent part of a night out. Teron Beal, 34, a songwriter and aspiring actor, said he encountered cocaine regularly and does it occasionally — and not only in clubs and bars. “When you’re in meetings and you’re in the studio, it’s offered like coffee,” he said. “If you say yeah, they’re cool with it and if you say no, they’re like O.K., and they just go and do it in front of you.”

“Coke is the new weed,” he continued. “Everybody says that.”

Tom Sykes, a former night-life reporter for The New York Post who chronicled his alcohol- and drug-fueled life in the memoir “What Did I Do Last Night?” said that cocaine is more socially acceptable than smoking. “You could go into a swanky party in New York and do a line and nobody would notice,” said Mr. Sykes, who is now sober. “Pull out a cigarette and people would think you’d pulled out a gun.”

Image Credit... John Ritter

And cocaine is not only popular in New York. “When I go to travel somewhere else, people think I do it and they’re so eager to shove it up my nose,” said Roxy Summers, a party promoter and D.J. who goes by the name Oxy Cottontail.