THE DEVASTATING PRICE OF BRITAIN'S COCAINE HABIT

The average cocaine user in Britain probably does not spend too much
time thinking about where their drug of choice comes from. If they
did, they might reflect on how it travels from South America to the
bars, clubs and kitchen tables of the UK. Though manufactured in
Latin America, the demand for the drug is driven almost entirely by
Western countries. It is no wonder that politicians in producer
countries have felt unjustly criticised for not being able to curtail
a drug trade that has grown exponentially in answer to the voracious
appetites of Londoners, New Yorkers and others in the West.

Consumers here should reflect more deeply on the impact their habit
has on people around the world. For cocaine, a drug that has halved
in price over the last 10 years and become as readily available as
marijuana, has a longer 'tail' than most other outlawed substances.
The trail of misery, destruction, violence and death it leaves in its
wake as it departs South America is undeniable. Those who choose to
use cocaine are directly responsible. If the demand dries up, then
the misery stops. Those who decide to use it are making an
unconscionable decision.

Cocaine differs in some marked respects from other drugs. While
marijuana is frequently grown under lamps in suburban warehouses, and
chemical drugs such as ecstasy are produced in European laboratories,
cocaine is predominantly an export from the dirt-poor rural areas of
South America to the developed world.

Only last week, the world watched a dramatic military standoff unfold
after Colombian troops crossed into Ecuador to kill a leader of the
Farc terrorist group, which is financed by the money it makes from
the coca leaf. The tense confrontation also sucked in Venezuela and
threatens to have geopolitical consequences in the months ahead.

But it is not just the poor of South America whose lives are
blighted. As the UN's drugs tsar describes in The Observer today,
cocaine has recently begun to devastate much of Africa's Gold Coast,
a staging post in the international trade. Traffickers have been
forced to change the routes along which they ply their trade by the
success of police actions in the Caribbean. Indeed, in tiny
Guinea-Bissau, cocaine has created a twisted state, where appalling
poverty clashes grotesquely with the lavish lifestyles of the drug dealers.

Huge quantities of cocaine continue to be consumed across Britain,
often by people who pride themselves on their ethical lifestyles.
There is nothing fashionable about cocaine and users should remember
the dreadful impact it has on the lives of millions of people in
distant countries. Cocaine might now be relatively cheap, but for
those whose path it crosses the price is still devastatingly high.