The white stuff: why Britain can't get enough cocaine

S.J.B.

S.J.B.

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The white stuff: why Britain can't get enough cocaine
Sirin Kale
The Guardian
January 30th, 2019

The moment Dan (not his real name) realised he had a problem with cocaine, he had been off work for a week, sick with flu. His phone buzzed. It was his cocaine dealer, calling to check he was OK. When Dan, one of his favoured customers, hadn't been in touch to buy the cocaine he usually took several times a week, the dealer knew something was wrong.

"I don't like thinking about that," Dan says, shaking his head as we sit in a London pub. Now 36, Dan estimates he has spent ?25,000 on cocaine. Lines in the pub on a Friday night after work. Lines on a Wednesday evening at a friend's house while earnestly discussing 90s hip-hop. Lines at house parties, weddings, birthday parties and for no reason at all, other than that cocaine -- the white powder that makes no one a better version of themselves, but that many of us continue to do anyway -- is everywhere and freely available.

Britain is a cocaine-loving country, and its love for the drug is growing. The country snorts more cocaine than almost anywhere in Europe. "Cocaine use is going up," says Joao Matias of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. In the UK in 2017-2018, 2.6% of people aged 16-59 took powdered cocaine (as opposed to crack cocaine, the more potent variant of the drug, which was taken by 0.1% of the population in the same period), up from 2.4% in 2013-2014, according to Home Office figures.

More young people are taking cocaine than ever before: 6% of 16- to 24-year-olds have tried it, despite the fact that, overall, fewer young people take drugs in general. It is also likely that Home Office figures, which often exclude students, prisoners and homeless people, underestimate cocaine use because those groups typically have above-average illegal drug use.

Most of this cocaine ends up in our sewage system, and researchers have been finding increasing levels in Britain's water supply since 2012, Matias says. Levels are highest at weekends, indicating recreational use.
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Read the full story here.
 
Good coke is nice.... but the price isnt worth it.

An old buddy used to say "the best thing to do on cocaine... is more cocaine."
 
Felonious Monk said:
Isn't coke really expensive in Britain too? How does everyone afford it?
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I'm not sure if this forum allows price discussion, but it's certainly twice the price it always was and has been for a number of years, rebranded as 'pure' or 'puruvian flake'. A gram is very expensive.

I feel like coke sneaked in through the back door and really ruined the end of my electronic music/after party years (not that they're over as such, but my friends circle has certainly stopped with the frequent afterparties). Before that everybody took MDMA and there was a far more healthy vibe, coke was more like a side dish then it stuck its grotty pores in and became the main course, leaving a subtle yet follow stain on the vibe.
 
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Tranced said:
I'm not sure if this forum allows price discussion, but it's certainly twice the price it always was and has been for a number of years, rebranded as 'pure' or 'puruvian flake'. A gram is very expensive.
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You reckon? It's always been out of my price range, but back in the eighties a gram cost about the same as it does now. Then it went ridiculously cheap in the 90s/noughties (but probably contained very little cocaine), but high demand seems to have pushed up the quality significantly over the last decade.

I still can't fuckin afford it mind you....
 
Without meaning to skirt the price discussion rules too much - there are definitely places in the world where it is far more expensive than the nation in question.

Either way though it is a waste of money and a boring pointless drug, I concur - as much as I have had many good times on it and can appreciate it, for sure.
 
Tranced said:
I'm not sure if this forum allows price discussion...
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I'm afraid not... however, I will say that it's worth looking at the tables in the UNODC World Drug Reports, as they give a good measure of the prices of illicit drugs around the world. ;)
 
F.U.B.A.R. said:
You reckon? It's always been out of my price range, but back in the eighties a gram cost about the same as it does now. Then it went ridiculously cheap in the 90s/noughties (but probably contained very little cocaine), but high demand seems to have pushed up the quality significantly over the last decade.

I still can't fuckin afford it mind you....
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Obviously I'm not speaking for the eighties here, as I was yet to have tried it by age four... if I remember rightly, anyway.

But my assessment is that coke in the early-mid 2000's was the same quality it was now but at about half the price (source dependent of course), then quality started to dwindle and eventually became diabolical, at which point there was a short drought (I think?), then it promptly came back twice as costly and roughly the same potency as a year or two earlier.

I seem to remember a report released in the past few years that put the average levels way lower than expected, even though everybody knew it was bashed. I've just found something on google which said the average purity as of 2012 was 25%, which was definitely post 'pure' coming into play (I think).

I can't even remember all this happened to be honest, maybe I did try it when I was four.
 
Tranced said:
Obviously I'm not speaking for the eighties here, as I was yet to have tried it by age four... if I remember rightly, anyway.

But my assessment is that coke in the early-mid 2000's was the same quality it was now but at about half the price (source dependent of course), then quality started to dwindle and eventually became diabolical, at which point there was a short drought (I think?), then it promptly came back twice as costly and roughly the same potency as a year or two earlier.

I seem to remember a report released in the past few years that put the average levels way lower than expected, even though everybody knew it was bashed. I've just found something on google which said the average purity as of 2012 was 25%, which was definitely post 'pure' coming into play (I think).

I can't even remember all this happened to be honest, maybe I did try it when I was four.
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Heheh, cocaine babies ftw!

obviously x quid a gramme in the 80s was significantly more expensive than x quid a gramme is in the, er, twenty teenies? But it seems to me that the price you pay with this stuff has very little to do with its quality. Basically, it's what the cunts can get away with, and unless you're seriously well connected, it's probably going to be shite anyway.

I have this discussion with my daughter regularly. Shes always off out with her mates doing 'flake' and tbh, I can't see any indication of hard drug use in any of them. This leads me to believe the quality of product they are consuming is shite (though she never offers me any to enable me to assess it...). I keep telling her, "you wanna get some decent fuckin sulphate down yer neck", but kids these days just see speed as a fat housewife's anorexic.

How wrong they are...
 
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^ Lol, some quite specific pricing info in that post! 8o

I will say that in my experience most people are so used to speedy coke they don't even know what real coke is. I had a friend who used fairly often - always untested street cocaine - and personally I'm a little more neurotic about my substances, but when I gave them some "real" cocaine they didn't even like it and tried to tell me they didn't think it was even coke (and before anyone feels the need to point it out - yeah yeah, I know my "real" cocaine was surely still cut with something, just speaking relatively here).
 
it went up 60% per gram in the usa since i was high school. and like people are talking about, i've heard people saying it costs the same amount now (the up 60% number) as it did in the 70s and 80s. take into account inflation, and whatthefuck? stuff isn't even good as cappuccino -- unless you smoke it.
 
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