He bought his first gram of “coke” just over a year ago. The dealer, who occasionally sells him cannabis, one day offered him a bag at the “special introductory rate” of £35. That weekend proved to be one of the best of his life. “I just had a brilliant time,” he said. “You rarely have a crap night with coke.”
Now, like many of his friends, he buys three grams on two weekends out of four, which costs him £240. Sunday is spent recovering. But Steve is not a City broker or the middle-class professional traditionally associated with cocaine. He is a painter and decorator from Merseyside and one of the growing number of working-class people who now regularly use cocaine.
Last month the British Crime Survey revealed that for the first time cocaine users are more likely to be semi-skilled or skilled manual workers than members of the professional classes. More than half a million people are now using Class A drugs every month and cocaine use has quadrupled since 1996, mainly because it has plummeted in price, dropping from £80 a gram seven years ago to half that now.
Steve, who earns about £400 a week, says that five years ago he would never have been able to afford the drug, more synonymous with Notting Hill dinner parties than northern pubs. “I never thought about it because it would have been out of my league and it wasn’t so easy to get anyway,” he said. “We mainly did E [Ecstasy] and the odd joint. But Charlie [cocaine] — I could buy some in this pub right now.”
Would he call himself dependent on it? “Honestly, during the week I don’t even think about it. But I find it hard to have a drink now without thinking, ‘I could just do a line now’. It’s like wanting a cigarette when you have a pint. So, yeah, in that way I’m dependent but not to the point that it’s a problem. Every so often we get carried away and go on a bender but then I just live on my credit cards until I get paid. I’ve got £ 2,000 (owing) on my card.”
Rock-bottom prices may not be the only reason that cocaine has become the most popular drug in Britain after cannabis. Ecstasy, the designer dance drug of the 1990s, now costs as little as £1 a tablet (ten years ago it was £15) and yet its popularity is waning. Clubbing magazines talk of young people becoming bored of Ecstasy and figures suggest a 20 per cent drop in use last year. Meanwhile, many 16 to 25-year-olds, raised in a culture of celebrity worship, see cocaine as a fashion accessory that bestows glamour on the user.
Russell Newcombe, a senior lecturer in drug use and addiction at Liverpool John Moores University, says that the shift from amphetamines, such as Ecstasy and speed, towards cocaine may reflect the changing values of young people. A significant proportion of young people today aspire more to celebrity and fame than the dance scene. To some cocaine is, literally, a taste of celebrity. Dr Newcombe said: “Many young people today just want to be famous for the hell of it. To an extent, cocaine goes with that empty-headed attitude.”
Where young girls once aspired to be nurses and teachers a recent survey showed that a third saw lap dancing as a glamorous job. In surveys young people say that their ambition is simply to achieve some sort of celebrity status. Also, Ecstasy has become so adulterated and weak that for many it has lost its appeal, Dr Newcombe said.
But there is something else that comes with cocaine. Chris Farrell, counsellor with the Lighthouse Project, a drugs support organisation in Liverpool, said that some of his clients were heavily in debt — £40 a gram may be relatively cheap but cocaine is such a “moreish” drug that before long many people need hundreds of pounds worth just for one night out.
Dr Newcombe said: “A lot of people I work with are getting into all kinds of debt. I see people from right across the board, from bus drivers to solicitors. Debts can range from £5,000 to £20,000. I know one lad who owes £45,000. A lot of people binge for three or four days a month, usually after payday.”
Is it worth it to have to stay in for most of the month just for the sake of one weekend? “There is the glamour thing attached to it. There are trendy bars and shops now. They want to be part of the scene,” he said.Most experts agree that parts of Britain are now awash with cheap cocaine, thanks to well-established smuggling routes via Spain. Drugs that come in to Liverpool, for instance, supply the North West and Scotland — where there is a huge cocaine problem and where police last year seized their first £10 bag of the drug. Petra Maxwell, spokeswoman for the independent drug adviser Drugscope, said: “Every year we hear of increasingly large hauls of cocaine. You would expect the price to go up but it seems to be an indication of the growing size of the market rather than how much we are making a dent into it.” But the eventual cost could be dear.
Professor John Reid, a stroke expert at Glasgow University, has said that cocaine is behind a rise in the number of strokes among people in their twenties and thirties. Other side-effects include depression, paranoia and the masking of the effects of drink. Dr Newcombe says that when the drug is consumed with large quantities of alcohol, as it often is, it creates a separate drug in the brain that is more toxic than either cocaine or alcohol.
Cocaine use, however, may have peaked. According to Ms Maxwell, the biggest increase in cocaine consumption was between 1996 and 2000.
Now there is evidence of a move towards increased use of ketamine, GHB, 2C-i, an hallucinogenic drug, and “magic mushrooms”.
For Steve and his mates though, cocaine is the only drug they are interested in at the moment. “It’s not like you’re a saddo heroin addict, is it?” he says. “It’s about having a good time.”
POWDER TRAIL
- Cocaine is made from the leaves of the coca shrub, which grows in the mountainous regions of South America in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Peru
- The street price of cocaine has dropped, particularly in the South East and London. A gram, which would have cost £80 seven years ago, can now be bought for £40 - £50
- Possession can carry a seven-year prison term
- It can be smoked or snorted, usually through a rolled-up banknote
- It raises body temperature and makes the heart beat faster
- The effect lasts 20 - 30 minutes and the drug is highly addictive
- Also known as Charlie, C, White, Snow and Toot
- Initially fashionable among the smart set, it is now increasingly being used among the working classes
