The men in the middle of London’s cocaine blizzard

0:04Cocaine is cheaper, stronger and more accessible than ever. So how did London become the cocaine capital of Europe? And why are men at the centre of the blizzard? Hi, and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. I'm Tamara Kormornik. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up, the men in the middle of London's cocaine blizzard.

0:37Londoners are using cocaine more than ever so much so it's become part of pub culture going hand in hand with a pint interestingly men are reporting to use cocaine twice as much as women and it's not just on the weekends so how did cocaine become so casual to explore the latest trend, I spoke to freelance journalist Jordan Page, who recently investigated the capital's latest Class A drug epidemic. Jordan, thanks so much for joining me on The Standard podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Jordan, reading your piece, I was curious about what inspired you to cover this story.

1:20Yeah, so I read a really scary statistic that deaths involving cocaine in the UK have actually increased each year for the last 13 years, which is obviously really worrying. And I think on a more individual level, I'm in my 20s, I live in London, I like to go out sometimes and you can definitely spot cocaine use in so many different settings around London. And it feels very normalized now where I feel like maybe 10 years ago it didn't. But I feel like people aren't necessarily talking about it as much. So, yeah, I just kind of wanted to shine a light on that in the piece. And so you mentioned the piece that London has been dubbed as the cocaine capital.

2:09So what makes London different from other cocaine loving cities, if we call them that, like Berlin or Amsterdam? So King's College actually estimates that in London, we consume more than eight tonnes of cocaine each year, which is actually more than cities like Berlin and Barcelona and Amsterdam combined. And where it's also quite interesting, the difference between London and other cities is that London shows high cocaine usage throughout the week, indicating that it's less of a weekend recreational thing and it's something that is actually a lot more ingrained in people's daily lives than I think that we thought.

2:52And why do you think the demand for cocaine has crept up in the past decade or so? I think it's a combination of a number of factors. So cocaine, like a lot of drugs, is a lot easier to buy nowadays because drug dealers use things like whatsapp and social media um and also there's a lot more cocaine being produced so between 2023 and 2022 there was an increase of 34 percent of cocaine production so there's more of it which is making it cheaper and then also the third kind of like part to play in it is that it's also a lot stronger So the same report, which was done by the UN, found that the average purity of cocaine in Europe has an average purity of 60 percent in 2023 compared to 35 percent in 2009.

3:49So you've got that it's easier to access, it's cheaper and it's stronger. And then I think the final kind of piece is that if you think about the climate of life in the UK right now, we work all the time. There's a cost of living crisis. And I think that a lot of people are looking for some form of escape and cocaine provides that. Also in your piece, you wrote about the kind of conjuncture between pub culture and cocaine culture. How do the two interact? So I think that you can't have the cocaine culture that we have in the UK without having the drinking culture that we have. And that's kind of really boosted since the introduction of the Licensing Act in 2003, which was an attempt by Tony Blair's government to imitate Mediterranean drinking culture and to boost the nightlife economy, open more spaces like pubs, bars, clubs that are open for longer hours, which therefore encourages drinking.

4:51whereas in mediterranean countries like spain and italy the culture around drinking is more you know you might have a glass of wine once an evening with dinner or after dinner whereas in the uk the culture is quite different because we have a very heavy episodic drinking culture and one of the reasons why people use cocaine in conversations that i've had is that it helps them to drink for longer. So it kind of goes hand in hand with that. And I think the pub is kind of like a breeding ground for it. I mean, I spoke to one case study, he was in his late 20s. And he said that he can't remember the last time that he went out drinking with his friends without getting a bag of cocaine in.

5:35And I think that that's true for quite a lot of people. And in your opinion, is there a difference between cocaine culture and general drug culture in the UK? I think so because I think that there's drugs like ecstasy and ketamine which are you know traditionally associated with partying and clubbing whereas I think cocaine has become really normalized and it just kind of goes hand in hand with casual drinking so I think it's kind of more similar in terms of its usage as something like marijuana where it's kind of become like a a habit rather than something that's you know just done on you know a night out for instance like it could be a random day in the pub um and I think cocaine just has kind of like filtered into that culture quite a lot and I think the thing with cocaine usage when you think of somebody that might take cocaine you kind of you're automatically thinking high-flying industry type that we're seeing on TV at the moment.

6:39Do you think these kind of stereotypes mask a real problem? I actually had a conversation with a representative from a mental health and drug charity called We Are With You. And they told me that their service, they've seen that a lot of people that come to them for cocaine use actually range in socioeconomic background, profession, age, which I think is quite a stark difference to the stereotypical depictions of cocaine users. And I think, yeah, it kind of like puts a blanket over this use that is so prevalent across so many groups in our society. We'll take a quick break. Coming up, I asked Jordan about the darker side of cocaine usage and its disproportionate impact on men.

7:21Plus, we talk about other drugs which are surging in popularity in London.

7:31Welcome back. Let's get back to my chat with Jordan. Jordan, you point to some very dark statistics in your article. So in the UK, men are twice as likely to report using cocaine as women, and men also make up nearly 80 % of the deaths involving cocaine last year. Why do you think there's such a stark gender division between men and women when it comes to cocaine usage? I think that, well, first off, men are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours than women are, research has shown. But I also think that going back to pub culture, you know, pubs are traditionally have been places where men meet.

8:18And I also had a really great conversation with a journalist called David Hillier, who's been writing about drugs in the UK for over 10 years now. He also runs a online newsletter called What Are You On, where he does deep dives into different drugs and how we use them. And he found that a lot of the time men who are using drugs in these situations, there's kind of an aspect of allowing them to open up a bit. Obviously, men have historically struggled to be emotionally available and to talk about their feelings and to be vulnerable. and the dopamine rush that cocaine gives them kind of makes them feel like their social inhibitions diminish they feel a bit more confident they feel like they can open up so I think that there's definitely the aspect of it and then I think when you look at the cocaine use in different industries like construction and hospitality and recruitment and sales those are all also quite male-dominated industries.

9:15So yeah, I think that there's kind of two main kind of drivers of it. And moving on to prevention on a mass level, do you think the government is dealing with the rising cocaine use effectively? I know the border force has made some major seizures. Last year was a pretty successful year for them. They included a 2.4 ton haul at London Gateway, which was one of the largest in recent years. The cocaine was hidden in some construction equipment. And there are, of course, legal consequences of possessing a class A drug like cocaine. This can lead to up to seven years in prison or a fine or both. Do you think these measures of capturing drugs as they're coming in and having pretty harsh penalties are the right kind of measures to deal with this trend?

10:15I think that capturing cocaine as it comes into the country and stopping it from coming into the country is one thing. And that's obviously a big responsibility of the government. But I also think that, you know, as we've seen, criminalising drug use and possession doesn't actually deter people from taking drugs. All it does is serve to stigmatise them. and we all with you told me that among their service cocaine users are the most hesitant to come forward in seeking support so I think that punitive measures while they obviously serve because cocaine is an illegal class a drug I think that to deal with the problem of you know so many people dying and so many men dying of using cocaine more needs to be done in terms of awareness and harm reduction, because at the end of the day, people are always going to take drugs and people take drugs for a myriad of different reasons.

11:13And I think that statistic of the deaths around involving cocaine rising each year is something that really needs to be focused on. And I think that punitive measures aren't going to stop that. Do you think in terms of prevention that the government should run almost a PSA campaign about cocaethylene, which is the toxic psychoactive substance that our livers produce when alcohol and cocaine are mixed, considering that cocaine is often consumed within the same kind of sitting as alcohol. Do you think that, you know, there should be widespread awareness of this issue? I think so because yeah like you said it has such a more severe impact on the cardiovascular system and you know when I was talking to one of my case studies I was talking to him and I told him about cocaethylene and I told him that you know it was more harmful on the body and he was really surprised by it and he had no idea of what it was so I think definitely awareness around that making harm reduction materials for instance more widely available so that someone isn't relying on really outdated unsafe information that they might find somewhere while some might argue that that encourages use it actually just encourages safe use rather than unsafe use which can then result in deaths and hospitalizations etc I think support for recreational users is also really important because I think there's kind of a bit of a stereotype that people who seek help for addiction are usually, you know, very heavy drinkers or alcoholics, or they might have a problem with a drug like heroin or crack.

12:57And I think that there's not enough awareness that support actually exists out there for people who do abuse cocaine. And then I think that the last thing, which is kind of like a wider problem, and I know that, you know, there's been a lot of campaigns in recent years about getting men to open up and to talk about their feelings and to go to therapy. I think that that would really reduce the reliance that a lot of men have on cocaine to access their feelings and to be able to feel like they're not as darkened down by what's going on in the world. I think that if men felt like that they could speak freely and are empowered to speak freely and empowered to reflect on how they're feeling and get help, I think that that could also stop that emotional reliance on cocaine.

13:44and lastly is it just cocaine are there any other drugs that are kind of that popped up and are now on your radar having researched this piece I mean yeah there's there's obviously a lot of drugs in society and while coke isn't actually the most used in the UK and marijuana is I think that you know it's so vast and so many different people of different ages and different backgrounds use drugs I mean, I know that my colleague Maddy Merson wrote a piece about how MCAT has had a comeback. You know, it kind of came about in the late 2000s and now it's having a resurgence in party circles. And then you look at LGBTQ communities and drugs like meth and GHB having a real rise in their use.

14:33But, you know, there's other drugs. There's like pink cocaine, which is a mixture of ketamine and MDMA. and then when you talk about ketamine, you know, that's having a massive resurgence and the amount of deaths and hospitalizations involving ketamine has also really increased in the last few years. But I think that cocaine is kind of the main one where it's the kind of way that it's taken and who takes it has changed. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Jordan. Thank you so much for having me. And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, email us at podcasts at standard.co.uk.

15:17We'll be back here tomorrow morning. See you then.