Stoned Britain
Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY
Some stunning drug caning stats for the UK through 2007 :
3.7 million adults used illicit drugs last year - 1.8m aged under 24 years old
2.8 million used cannabis - 1.5m under 24
1.2 million took a class A drug last year - 560,000 under 24
900,000 used cocaine powder - 425,000 under 24
625,000 used ecstasy - 310,000 under 24
500,000 used amyl nitrate (poppers)
476,000 used amphetamines
154,000 used tranquillisers
87,000 used LSD
69,000 used glues
65,000 used crack cocaine
46,000 used heroin
41,000 used methadone
Throw in corner shop rivers of cheap imported booze, legal low dose pharmacy opiates like Nurofen Plus, billions of prescription anti-depressants, uppers, downers and all-rounders, and you’ve got one seriously fucking high country. As the British economy tanks, drug use of all kinds will presumably soar.
An ecstasy user rages against the quality of the local merchandise :
Britain….currently has the worst drugs in the world, in terms of quality, cleanliness and the user’s ability to measure them and be able to judge their tolerance to them. Because we’re an island, and because of terrorism and security, people here are becoming acclimatised to bad-quality drugs. If you believe that people go through behavioural phases, moving through periods of taking drugs and growing out of them, then the real concern should be the decreasing quality of what those people - and the poor, especially - are taking.
A 15 year old hash smoker from Swansea dreams of his simple, perfect evening and perfect girl:
What I’d seriously like is to be online on MySpace, be on PlayStation 2, and have a smoke halfway through homework, with a dressing gown across the bottom of the door and really knowing no one’s going to be in the house for two hours. That and being on the ramps (skateboarding) where there’s someone with smokes and jokes. And girls. My picture of paradise is a girl on the ramps - no lamer, she’s always busting it out - who sort of gets she’s sexy but doesn’t. She has Air Insurgents [trainers] and has the moves and has her own little stash of hash. Everyone I hang around with wants the girl like that.
“Loads of” lawyers in England are hitting the skag, apparently :
I work perfectly on smack. I’m not drinking at lunch, like others in my office. When you’ve got heroin you don’t need alcohol. The only difference is you can’t get it 24 hours in Tesco. I know one lawyer who’s been on smack for 18 years. One clerk I knew died last year, but that’s because the stuff that came through was great after he’d been having stuff for weeks that was 15 per cent, you understand? He was a good worker, good with papers like me.
Television sells the surreal, the halucinogenic :
The Virgin Atlantic ad on TV - it’s very spacey and John Hannah’s in it - is like a commercial for the hallucinogenic side of ketamine, to me. There’s drug imagery everywhere. You flick through the channels on TV and see lots of people who are obviously on drugs - middle-aged presenters, politicians, the lot - who sniff when the camera’s not on them. I’ve been told as a fact that drugs are allowed and encouraged on one of the reality shows. It’s edited out.
A 22 year old crack freak in London gets the surveillance society to work in his favour :
I don’t sell bones - that’s crack - or skunk or coke or speed. What I do is sell cooking herbs [passed off as drugs] to get money to go and buy bones for myself. I feel no guilt, none. If I don’t rip them off someone else will.
I’ve been in Camden this week. The CCTV helps me rip people off. I say, ‘Don’t open it [the wrap], move… the camera is turning, go…’
Longer versions of these dark, desperate, sometimes funny portraits of drug-addled Brits can be read here.
