Words: Antony Loewenstein
Cocaine is everywhere. In offices and cafes, meeting rooms and parties, homes and bathrooms, restaurants and clubs, at universities and on bank notes. It’s never been so ubiquitous in the UK (and globally). And nor has it ever been this widely available, cheap and high in purity. Order it like you’re calling an Uber on your phone. Grams of cocaine are delivered to you in London and other major cities faster than a pizza or pint in a busy pub. Street dealing is declining in popularity, due to the extensive use of CCTV cameras — and so clever technology has turbo-charged the drug trade. Dealers now use call-centres in Belgium, Spain, the Balkans and France — through encrypted numbers — to get cocaine speed-delivered to them. Drug couriers, often from Albania, enter and leave the UK and complete their business in a matter of days. Street dealers often use Ubers as drug premises, and users are happy — while the rates of cocaine use and abuse continue to soar.
The dark web is now a place where many users buy cocaine and any number of legal and illicit substances. It’s much easier to buy drugs online than in person, and inarguably far safer to order a product that is sent to your house — not to mention that products often come with reviews of quality and strength. Although law enforcement is constantly taking down dark web sellers, and claiming they’re winning the war on online drug marketplaces, huge demand for prohibited drugs will continue to sustain these increasingly-used forums for cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, opioids, synthetics and marijuana.
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