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Cocaine Use in the UK

The UK is in the midst of a cocaine-induced fever. Every night of the week, the drug is snorted by the full gamut of the UK’s social spectrum. From middle-aged, middle-class dinner parties to children living at below the poverty line, cocaine use has never been more popular than at present: in the context of an overall decrease in class A drug use, it bucks the trend by increasing from 1.2% to 2.4% of the adult population over the last eight years. Despite the more obvious detrimental effects cocaine use might have on local communities – providing a financial income for dealers that might peddle more harmful drugs like crack-cocaine or heroin for instance – much blood is being spilt in Latin America over control of the cocaine production trade.

The vast majority of the world’s cocaine is grown and refined in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. The latter, now in its fifth decade of civil conflict, possesses a stranglehold on the world’s cocaine production and distribution, estimated at 70-80%. The resultant perpetual war fought between Marxist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and government troops centres around control of the lucrative cocaine production industry, valued by the UN at a staggering $70.45 billion.

Whilst casualties on all three sides are consistently high, the civilian population is also affected: 13% of Colombia’s territory is thought to be land-mined, resulting in 314 deaths in 2006. Children accounted for 66 of these. Makeshift weapons like missiles fashioned from gas cylinders, impossible to aim with any degree of accuracy, inflict untold civilian casualties as well. Both land-mines and such weapons are condemned by organisations such as the Human Rights Watch, despite being touted by FARC as the “weapon of the poor” in an effort to make their use more widespread.

As well as the humanitarian crisis caused by cocaine production, the environment in Colombia also is being destroyed. Pesticides used by growers seep into the ground water and have devastating effects on local flora and fauna, as well as making local communities’ drinking water unusable. Processing requires the use of sulphuric acid, of which about 10 million litres a year is dumped directly into the ground. Small river systems are destroyed and nearby livestock and humans fall easy prey to disease.

Disastrous crop-eradication programmes, financed mainly by the US, have done little to halt production of the drug. The problems in Colombia, as well as the whole of the Andean region, are directly fuelled by the insatiable desire for cocaine by Western Europe and the USA. Whilst the immediate effects of cocaine abuse can be seen all too visibly amongst British communities, the harm does not stop there. Until Europeans stop consuming the drug, blood will continue to be spilt many miles away.