Some Get A Kick Out Of Cocaine

Well, more than some. Nearly 4% of the city is engaged in snorting Charles according to the calculations of scientists who took samples from the river.

Depends how much you allow for each user. Embarrasingly, friends of ours are regular users. They have proper jobs, careers even (one is a partner in a law firm). We declined an invitation recently to a house party where we knew there would be a big quicksniff element. It's just so self-consciously transgressive. I much preferred it when it was the preserve of the rich and the sleazy. Now, it's so suburban.

Cocaine is at the stage of public acceptance that Cannabis was at in about 1983. Before then smoking dope was for students, hippies and Jamaicans. At some point the students got jobs and began their inevitable climb into positions of power. And with that the drug has become accepted. If you are a low user and not a supplier you have more chance of being busted for not buying a TV licence.

And so it will be with cocaine. In twenty years everyone will have taken cocaine. It is an unstoppable force. There have been the usual attempts (education, siezures) to stop it. To no avail. I went to a place in Shoreditch a few years ago where they had a bouncer in the wc. His role in life was to stop people getting a fix in the cubicle. In twenty years that will seem as quaint as a teacher expecting you not to smoke outside the school.

It's now cheaper than it has ever been. Cocaine is everywhere. Drug deals are done at the top of my suburban street. Every toilet cistern in the night-time economy is used as a cocaine table. Almost every banknote in use in London has traces of cocaine on it.

You got a problem with that?