NEWS

Drug gangs boost cocaine purity to compete with internet highs It was a backstage EXCLUSIVE secret. To be able to make two shows a Max Daly day, maybe 500 miles apart. You need some Drug gangs are stepping up the purity of added that dealers accepted that the new sustenance and it’s cocaine in response to competition from generation of stimulants had become not just food and the new generation of stimulants such as popular because cocaine was cut to the water. mephedrone, according to Britain’s organised bone. “To some extent the market has Rolling Stone Keith crime agency. realised that it has cut cocaine below an Richards explains on the Analysis of police seizures between April acceptable level for most users.” Andrew Marr Show how last year and June this year reveals the SOCA said the rise in purity was the band got into drugs average purity of powder cocaine seized by also likely to have been influenced by a police has jumped from a record low of 17 clampdown by police on the movement per cent last year to 26 per cent this year. of cocaine cuttings agents and increased All jobs carry an The Serious Organised Crime Agency supply of cocaine into the UK caused by element of risk, and I (SOCA) said it believed the upturn in purity – gangs finding new routes and methods of am conscious of that, to 2008 levels – is a direct result of high-end smuggling. “Law enforcement action against but I also know that I British dealers reacting to the explosion of the cutting agent trade has raised the cost have to do something mephedrone onto the drug scene last year. and reduced the availability of substances to combat the The cathinone, known also as m-cat and such as lignocaine and benzocaine,” said problems we face meow meow, was sold as a cheap and legal Kirby. “A slight increase in the availability of Marisol Valles, a substitute for cocaine and ecstasy. It was cocaine had been predicted due to observed 20-year-old criminology seen by drug users as a more potent and adjustments by organised crime groups to student, has been made reliable high than cocaine, because it was successful disruptions in the international police chief in a border not heavily cut with inert substances such supply chain.” town in the northern as benzocaine. Cocaine seized at customs has risen state of Chihuahua, one Despite being banned in April, slightly in purity, from around 57 per cent of Mexico’s most violent mephedrone and a string of other legal and last year to 64 per cent this year. areas. illegal stimulants remain widely available Until last year, cocaine purity had been over the internet and on the streets. falling steadily from levels of over 60 per Seizures of mephedrone have continued cent in the 1980s. But rather than follow the I haven’t lived an to rise after the ban. “There has been an trend set by amphetamine, which over the admirable life, but impact from the competition of so-called last decade has fallen to an average purity of I’m trying to do the legal highs,” said SOCA’s Head of Drug under 10 per cent, cocaine purity appears to right thing here. For Intelligence, Nigel Kirby, told Druglink. He be on the rise after hitting rock bottom. everyone. Longterm heroin user Alan Mitchell tells the Daily Mail, why he accepted £200 from Project Prevention to get sterilised.

I’m just doing this to put the air bubbles out of it. If an air bubble goes into your brain, that’s you gone. Now what I need to do is pull my sleeve up. Robyn, a 16-year- old homeless drug user, filmed injecting heroin for a Channel 4 documentary, True Purity on the rise: analysis by the Forensic Science Service shows cocaine now has an average 26 per Vision. cent purity compared to 17 per cent last year

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER DRUGLINK | 3