IT'S THE UK'S DRUG OF CHOICE, BUT WHAT HAS CAUSED SUCH A SNOW STORM?

SO, WE'RE taking more cocaine than ever. Oh, good. All's the better to
blather on 'till four am about pyramids on Jupiter while drinking yourself
into a toxic broth and feeling, the next day, like an incubus mugged you in
the night, ran off with your body and left only some sludge slurried on a
collection of bones. Which can only be remedied by a breakfast the size of
your head. And some lunch-time booze. Which makes you fall over so you
better take some more cocaine and so it goes until you either grow out of it
or end up in non-celebrity rehab wondering just who the bam-pot was who gone
and stole your life. (Clue: it was you.) Cor, what a drug, eh nation!? And
yet we love it more than any other nation (apart from America). Britain is
now officially the Cocaine Capital of Europe, a statistical finding coming
our way since the drug cartels avalanched it into Britain in the
mid-Nineties (and the Britpop bender began), white-carpeting the country via
the combination of awareness, availability, falling prices and the speedy,
surface, instant gratification values of rampant consumer society. Dude.
Today, throughout Europe, nine million people have used cocaine, 62 million
have smoked cannabis and 2.6 million have taken ecstasy.

Everyone else, of course (the vast majority), has never taken cocaine
or any other drug apart from the ones that are several thousand times
more likely to wreck their lives or kill them: fags 'n' booze. Me, of
course, I have never taken cocaine, but if I had, I would probably
declare it the neurological equivalent of a psychotic-agitation
seizure and the worst drug in the world, emotionally, spiritually,
morally, creatively and psychologically bankrupt.

Let's hope, currently, there's an alchemist in a lab in Adelupe
cultivating a new drug for the 21st century, kaleidoscopic and unique,
which blows a hole straight through the structure of the human DNA
into a brand new evolutionary dawn. And that way, music, clothes, art,
books, films and cyberspace will be brand-new berserk, a generation of
visionaries will rule the world and the international conspiracy of
brand-u-like corporate commercialism will finally, officially, be
over. Or, perhaps, humankind will stop drinkin' 'n' druggin'
altogether and find inner peace at last in its wretched, toxic soul
(highly unlikely ) In 2002, the last time reports of Britain's cocaine
epidemic caused foot-high headlines, traces of cocaine then found on
"almost all European bank notes" as the bars and clubs hit back' by
replacing horizontal bathroom cisterns with sloping ones (almost as
effective as concerned' politicians suggesting bar staff wear Know The
Score' T-shirts), I was dispatched across London to report on the
phenomenon, talking to cocaine users from 17 to 45, dealers, drug
counsellors and help-centre professionals. After two months, these
were the conclusive findings: people like drugs. Some people who like
drugs cannot handle drugs. Some people wreck their lives through drugs
and some people actually die. Some people live and continue to use
drugs even if they're high-court judges. Drugs cause crime.

The current drug laws, supposedly to protect people (from themselves
and from the criminals) aren't working. Cocaine specifically causes
multi-fold horrors in the countries which supply it. And no one's
really sure what to do about any of it.

Outwith the law, though, and the individual spores in the cultural
petri dish which brings everything our way, there was a simple
question I thought we might want answered, which was put to the
interviewees: why (for almost everyone, if you include alcohol) isn't
life good enough without drugs? Here's a selection of responses, a
cross-section of Britain trying to make sense of a situation which,
four years on, has not only not changed, but seen cocaine use in
15-24-year-olds actually quadruple.

Cocaine dealer: "Who says anything has to be missing? What makes
people who've never taken illegal drugs think they've got something
that we're lacking? I think that's existential guilt. Total rubbish.
Absolute tripe."

Thirty-seven-year-old from Glasgow: "It's just the endless pursuit of a good
laugh, that's all it is. It makes everything go bonkers. And the day I stop
laughing is the day I'll be deid."

Twenty-five-year-old: "Boredom, mundanity, the sheer torpor of
life."

Drugs help-centre professional specialising in cocaine and crack:
"Deprivation, poverty, poor social housing, appalling education and
the increased divide between the poor and the rich. Profound causes
which would be too costly for politicians to address. In a time where
politics focuses on dealing with the symptoms, always, but none of the
causes."

Seventeen-year-old: "I just like the buzz. Drugs are there and drugs
make me feel good."

Forty-two-year-old ex-crack and heroin addict: "Life is good enough
without drugs, but drugs can be intensely pleasurable. They're part of
life. They're as old as art. And temptation."

Cocaine dealer: "The nature of human beings seems to be, if possible,
they'll never go to bed. We invented electricity. There are gonna be
problems but we're just going to have to deal with the problems
because cocaine is not going to go away. Unless you blow Columbia and
Peru off the face of the Earth."

Professional counsellor: "If you had the answer to that question,
you'd be hired by every drug rehabilitation centre in the country!"

Cannabis dealer: "The only people throughout anthropological history
that never ever used drugs were the Eskimos. Because they couldn't
grow any, could they? I dunno. It's a good question. I guess we're not
yet in a state of grace. And it looks like we never will be."