London is world's cocaine capital

[T_i_B]

Oh dear.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article349325.ece

Cocaine is replacing ecstasy as the drug of choice on the club scene for the first time, with record numbers of young people snorting the powder for as little as £30 a gram.

Now widely affordable, cocaine has soared in popularity among the Ibiza set with more than three-quarters saying they have taken the drug, compared with only half last year. In contrast, there has only been a small percentage rise in the number of users of ecstasy, which once dominated the club scene. The cost of cocaine has nearly halved over the past decade, which has also given rise to an alarming trend in bingeing on the drug. Nearly one in 10 people in their twenties who go to clubs admit to taking two grams in a session - the equivalent of 40 lines.

These figures are based on a survey of more than 2,000 regular club-goers across the country, ranging from students to civil servants, carried out by the magazine Mixmag, seen as the clubbers' Bible. They demonstrate that the drug is no longer used just by overpaid footballers and celebrities, but now touches every section of UK society. An investigation by The Independent on Sunday has found that dealers are openly selling it almost anywhere in London, from pubs to restaurant toilets.

London is now the cocaine capital of the world, according to experts. A UN report revealed last week that one in 50 people have used cocaine in Britain - a higher figure than anywhere else in the world, including countries such as the US.

[Delphinus]

1. 40 lines?!

OMG - how do they not die with that much cocaine in their systems?

[BooScout]

7. I think it's BS....

Anyone that did that much coke in one night would be dead.

[BlueEyedSon]

9. Based on the price & dosage, my guess it's 90% filler!

[Gman]

12. Exactly...

no rocks.

[bearfan454]

26. Darn right.

40 lines is death if it is even half ass pure.

[TheBaldyMan]

16. it's cut

you lucky bastards are a lot closer to Colombia than Europe. Having said that the acid, ecstasy and skunk is top-notch, or so I've been told. Thanks to Bush, heroin is readily availiable as well.

[dysfunctional press]

23. how do they get 40 lines out of two grams?

english lines must be smaller than american ones.

[Skeptor]

2. Time to ban clubbing?

Or is it just nature's way of deselecting the over-indulgent?

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. You mean it's not Miami?

I always thought Miami was the cocaine capital of the world. Back in the 80's it was a running joke down there that a guy couldn't get a date with a girl unless he had a gram of coke in his pocket, but that was back before the crack epidemic and cocaine wasn't so cool any more.

[Tikki]

4. Yuk, I remember....

.....and cocaine makes users act like pompous scum bags.

[T_i_B]

5. And that's certainly my experience of coke-heads.

[otohara]

25. Everybody Gets Smarter On Coke

fucking geniuses...

[Gman]

13. Back in the 80's they did a scan of random $20 bills

at the Miami airport and found something like more than half had traces of cocaine on them. I forget the exact percentage.

[dysfunctional press]

24. the percentage is probably higher than that-

it doesn't mean that they have all been used to snort the stuff- most of them get tainted thru contact with other tainted bills- in wallets, cash drawers, etc...

[T_i_B]

31. Oh the press over here likes to bandy about statistics

about how many bank notes are contaminated too!

[bullimiami]

14. hey, take it easy on us.

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. I speak from experience

I lived there for 13 years.

[Gman]

29. I spent time there with friends when they were just starting to

develop South Beach. I remember sitting at one of the new bars and looking out onto the sidewalks out to the water from Ocean and watching all the predominantly elderly Jewish folks that lived in those old hotels, sitting out on the benches ... all while we were dissolving our septums and drinking rum runners.

Then it starting getting too hot in Miami so they shifted to shipping it into the US via Mexico.

[RebelOne]

17. I remember when I lived in Miami, getting cocaine

was as easy as buying beer.

[bullimiami]

21. not that theres anything wrong with that. of course.

[Greeby]

6. Somehow "Say hello to my little friend"

Doesn't really work in a Cockney accent :eyes:

[0007]

8. Yeah right,

20,000 TONS OF cocaine were seized by UK Customs officers during 2004.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Wrong units, I think

20,000 kg, or 20 tonnes. From the BBC:

21 tons of cocaine seized in 2003/04**

1.6 tons of heroin seized in 2003/04

1.2 tons of ecstasy seized in 2003/04

58 tons of cannabis seized in 2003/04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/drugs_uk/drugs_map/html/default.stm#

[panader0]

10. Coke is alot cheaper here on the Mexican border

[sofa king]

18. I was going to ask, "how the hell is it getting in?"

But then I realized that's a silly question. There is a demand for it, and I guess that demand creates the ingenuity necessary to get it onto an island an ocean away.

"Say 'ello to moy li'ul friend, mate."

[lovuian]

19. Now I wonder why that is ...Tony has been part of the Cocaine

mafia....

[ConcernedCanuk]

20. Phew! - for a minute there I thot they meant London, Canada!!

.
.
.

London is in the top ten size-wise of Canadian cities, located in southern Ontario. It has a population of just over 330,000.



Never hear too much news about London, and I have never lived there, but the lack of news would suggest to me that it's pretty peaceful city.

Anyone curious about our CANUCK London can wander around at the link below.

http://www.london.ca/

[Maven]

22. Well, cheerio!

Virgin Atlantic, here I come darling!

[cliss]

27. Well, there's one way to tell

Are there a lot of people sitting in these bars, sniffling and wiping their noses?

I just remember seeing some photos of Johnny Carson, and how he was always reaching for his nose, and sniffling.

Over time, the membranes between the two nostrils gets eaten away from all the cocaine use.....ugh

[T_i_B]

30. Anyone got any pictures of Daniella Westbrook?

US DUer's will probbably not have heard of her, but she is most famous for tooting so much coke that her septum got eaten away and she ended up with one big nostril where everyone else has two!

Mind you, even that does not dissuade a lot of people from snorting the stuff.

[High Plains]

28. Silly article. The US is the number one cocaine market.

Brazil is number two.