Compared with the screaming scare campaigns of the 1990s, anti-drugs messaging is thin on the ground these days. So the casual observer may not realise that Britain has, quietly but surely, lost its “war on drugs”. Amid a steep rise in drug poisonings, a particularly striking statistic emerged last week. Between 2022 and 2023, cocaine-related deaths in England and Wales soared by 30%. The figure is now around 10 times higher than in 2011.
And that could be an underestimate. There’s often a time lag of two to three years between drug deaths and the coroner’s assessment on which these statistics are based, says Ian Hamilton, associate professor of addiction at the University of York: current rates are probably even higher. What’s more, not all deaths resulting from cocaine are included. The long-term damage that eventually ends in a stroke or a heart attack will not show up in these reports.
What is going on? One culprit is a precipitous rise in purity, which makes it easier to overdose by accident. Once cocaine was sold in a two-tier market: the cheap, heavily adulterated stuff, and the expensive, purer cocaine consumed by models, city traders and members of the Bullingdon Club. Now, according to the latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, cocaine in Europe has on average a purity of over 60%, compared with 35% in 2009. Today, even street cocaine rivals the top-end stuff of the 1980s.
Banning stuff works really well. That’s the argument for banning vapes, see?
I have to admit that reading snippets from the Graun is starting to make me want to read it. Not for news or information, obviously, but because increasingly it seems to resemble Viz or the Beano, with its simple, if unintended, innocent humour…
I thought it was only we gammons, the crusty old far right facists, who dwelt in the past, but I’m glad to see the re-emergence of the good old Bullingdon Club after 30 odd years…
Anti-drugs messaging is thin on the ground because the trade is largely the preserve of victims suffering from racial intolerance and the busies prefer not to offend them and would sooner focus on non-crime hate incidents and extreme far-right terror threats.
Expensive cocaine has been democratised, thank goodness, and is no longer the preserve of monied people we hate like models (who are so much more attractive than guardian journalistesses), city traders (despicable human beings) and Bullingdon Club members (who are few in number but the eternal foe in the Class Strggle).
Cocaine is a wankers’ drug.
Arresting drug addicts and dealers would mean arresting too many of those of darker skin. They also might be reluctant to obey the law today, and the other police are not likely to be fit enough to make the arrestee actually come along.
Far safer to sit at a desk and monitor Twitter, then go out and arrest those who point this out.
It would also require the arrest of a lot of Albanians, who whilst nominally white are also majority Muslim. Mmm. Bit of a tricky one, that.
M – a lot of British drug users are middle class people who get their drugs delivered by Royal Mail.
Legal weed is higher quality and cheaper than the stuff Albanians grow. We could defund the gangs by allowing any adult to grow or buy it without a prescription, but they’ll probably do the stupid thing instead: try to tax it like cigarettes, and allow gangsters to undercut legitimate businessess.
In the US, despite the legalisation of cannabis, the piss-take levels of taxation they apply in most states means the cartels are still very much in business. Idk if you’ve ever seen Breaking Bad, but those Mexican cartels aren’t nice guys.
So it depends on what they want – it’s possible to remove a huge source of funding for criminal gangs, or collect chunky tax revenues from users. But not both. In any event, we had a war on drugs and drugs won.
PS – in case PJF is reading.
PJF, do you drink alcohol?
Being pissed on lager is a lot more dangerous than toking. I’ve never seen a bunch of lads get into fisticuffs because they were smoking the wacky baccy, and unlike alcohol you can’t die from marijuana withdrawals.
Being drunk feels like a dirty and unpleasant kind of high, if booze hadn’t been grandfathered in to our culture we’d probably ban it.
So the casual observer may not realise that Britain has, quietly but surely, lost its “war on drugs”.
A drug trade which is dominated by recently arrived young men of fighting age with African or Eastern European heritage and extremely questionable grounds for being let into this country.
Best talk about something (anything) else eh?
– in case PJF is reading.
Steve, if I’m living rent free in your head the drugs aren’t helping you.
Most of a drug gangs profits come from a small number of drug users. 80/20 rule applies.
So track down the heavy drug users and lock them up. Most oft he drug gangs profits would vanish overnight.
PJF – I just thought you’d be interested this topic as you’ve mentioned it before. Perhaps you’d be less bitchy on drugs?
I’ve never seen a bunch of lads get into fisticuffs because they were smoking the wacky baccy, and unlike alcohol you can’t die from marijuana withdrawals.
Another subject Steve from the suburbs knows SFA about. Prolonged heavy use of cannabis can cause all sorts of mental abnormalities. Delusions, paranoia, poor anger control, aggressive behaviour, you name it. Why do you think the yoof are so keen on stabbing each other & anyone upsets them, FFS? Drunks I can handle. And at least they pass out eventually. Dope heads just get meaner.
BiS – Another subject Steve from the suburbs knows SFA about.
I’m terrible at rolling, that’s for sure. I bet you can do them blindfolded.
Prolonged heavy use of cannabis can cause all sorts of mental abnormalities. Delusions, paranoia, poor anger control, aggressive behaviour, you name it. Why do you think the yoof are so keen on stabbing each other & anyone upsets them, FFS? Drunks I can handle. And at least they pass out eventually. Dope heads just get meaner.
Overdosing on drugs is a bad idea, film at 11.
Yes, prolonged heavy use of alcohol can… yadda yadda.
I think there is a legitimate medical reason to keep young people away from cannabis, I don’t think any mind-altering substances including booze are good for people whose brains are still developing.
Other than that?
“In my youth,” father William replied to his son,
“I feared it would injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”
You can get flower on prescription in the UK now. From actual British doctors and everything. Seems the medical opinion is now that cannabis is generally safe for adults when used in moderation and all that. But they won’t prescribe cannabis to anyone with a family history of psychosis – and when you hear those rare tragic cases of somebody having a psychotic break on skunk weed, it’s usually somebody who should not have been taking mood altering substances at all.
So what I’m saying is, drugs are good.
I’m what I’m thinking, Steve, is you’ve FA experience of them. Unlike the pussies where you come from who get all peacenloooveman after a couple of puffs of “whackybaccy”, Chalkie, who’s been tokeing bush since he was 8 years old, will be more “yodissinmeruffclat? ” & feeding you 6 inches of steel in the guts. Why’d you think the piece of enrichment the copper righteously topped & got himself courted for, was perforating people right, left & centre? Overdose of tranquillity?
BiS – so what I think you’re saying is, chavs are scum?
We know.
PS – BiS, I’m touched that you think my upbringing was more idyllic than it was. I grew up on a council estate. As you probably know, nobody hates lowlives, layabouts and criminals the way the honest working class do.
As someone whose son died aged 18 from the effects of overindulgence in “wacky baccy”, I will never be convinced that any drugs are safe.
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