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‘Getting hold of coke is as easy as buying chips,’ said
24-year-old Steve from Brighton. Glaswegian Joannne, 21, last took
coke after dinner on Saturday, and usually takes it three or four
times a week. Compared to getting hold of cannabis or ecstasy,
27-year-old Andy from Newcastle said finding cocaine is ‘a
piece of piss’. ‘It’s just like having
a beer,’ shrugged Simon, 25, in Bristol. ‘It’s
no big deal.’
Everyone knows the British are a nation of caners. But in March
2001 THE FACE interviewed 1,000 teenagers and twentysomethings
in ten cities across the UK about their cocaine use, and the results
were astonishing. Forty-five per cent said they had taken cocaine.
Forty three per cent consider cocaine less dangerous than ecstasy.
When research places British teenagers at the top of the European
league table for drug consumption, you could call this a phenomenon.
You could call it a crisis. But you’d probably just call
it another night out (or in).
Why cocaine, and why now? Britain’s appetite for coke has
long been an open secret, but never before has it been so culturally
pervasive. Blame the UK’s nine-year economic boom, or the
drop in prices, but cocaine has followed the same downwardly-mobile
trajectory as so many other commodites dear to our conmsumer culture.
Once it ws the drug of the rich, famous and fucked. But just like
designer handbags, cocaine is a mirage of high-life cachet that’s
no more exclusive to salons in Belgravia than it is to chain pubs
in Basingstoke. You’re as likely to find the new classless
drug of the masses in halls of residence in Manchester, or gyms
in Leeds, as in the toilets of a members-only bar in London: anywhere
with a a clean, flat surface.
Somewhere beneath this lies the perception that cocaine isn’t
dangerous - at least, softer and certainly less tawdry than
its class-A companion heroin. The ‘celebrity’ drug – forever
claiming penitent new ‘victims’ from among its fans – is
as much a fixture of A-list London as Louis vuitton accessories.
However, cocaine doesn’t have its own Whitehall sponsored
awareness campaign or a methdone-like susbstitute to be taken when
the casual thrill turns into a problem.
It’s an amusing fact that cocaine was solds as a tonic in
chemists 100 years ago. Yet who is shocked that cocaine is being
used in High Street pubs today? For a clear indication of cocaine’s
descent into ordinariness, next time you’re in the toilets
of a bar or club, run your hand across the top of the cistern.
Now check the flecks of white dust in the palm of your hand. Like
the converts and caners it has gathered around it, cocaine has
never been here is such quantity. But if you’re not in the
cubicle because you were answering the call of nature, chances
are you already knew that.
Seven day in the life of the New Powder generation start here.
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