Coked Up In Suburbia

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 169 months ago

Last Updated 03 March 2010

Coked Up In Suburbia

Stop sniffing... you, in the corner of the room, buttonholing some terrified-looking soul and banging on about something random... you might think you're projecting an image at the bleeding meeja edge of popular culture with your Bolivian marching powder but we know your secret. You probably live in Havering, don't you? Or Bexley, Bromley or leafy Greenwich? For these are the boroughs that provided the highest proportion of people coming in for coke treatment in 2008-09. Not Islington or Hackney, but the respectable 'doughnut' boroughs. Who knew?

Coke use generally is on the rise - whereas in 1996, around 3% of UK adults said they'd tried it at least once, it's now nearly 10% - and hilariously, MPs are blaming celebrities for turning it into a perceived 'middle class' drug (we suspect falling street prices and ineffective border policing might be more responsible). Perhaps Pablo's next campaign could be to highlight the effect of drugs production on the people of Columbia and / or global warming - on these figures, leaning on middle class guilt might prove more effective in cutting drug use than bloody noses in nightclub toilets.