The decision by Met police commissioner Cressida Dick to criticise the use of cocaine by the middle classes shows an understanding of the drugs trade and a determination to reduce its impact.

Highlighting the fact that certain sections of society need to consider their personal ethics and the repercussions of their behaviour, her comments are relevant, honest and in line with her responsibility to protect London communities.

“There is this challenge that there are a whole group of middle-class – or whatever you want to call them – people who will sit round … happily think about global warming and fair trade, and environmental protection and all sorts of things, organic food, but think there is no harm in taking a bit of cocaine. Well, there is. There’s misery throughout the supply chain,” she said.

The processes drugs go through before they reach the end user have a massive impact on the unseen victims of this vicious trade.

Consider a wrap of cocaine. The powder might have travelled more than 5,000 miles to the UK from Colombia, where workers are forced by the cartels and paramilitaries to work in remote fields and in dangerous jungle “labs”, harvesting and manufacturing. They face intimidation and violence from their employers and risk being caught in the crossfire with police and army.

Statistics show that more than 177,000 civilians were killed in Colombia’s drug trade between 1958 and 2013. Entrenching poverty and fuelling violence, the trade is now worth $10bn (£7.5bn) a year. In the distribution process, there are the multi-kilo importations using concealments within ships and aircraft but also lone couriers, forced into trafficking under duress, made to swallow condoms filled with cocaine or heroin. They are faced with detection, imprisonment and sometimes – when the parcels rupture inside them – death.

Police officers carry out an operation in a notorious area of Bogotá plagued by rampant drug trafficking and prostitution rings. Photograph: Guillermo Legaria/AFP/Getty Images

In the cannabis-producing regions, impoverished workers are exploited and abused with poor wages and risky conditions. Closer to home are the thousands of cannabis factories maintained by individuals, mainly Vietnamese, who have been trafficked into Britain for what they believe will be legitimate work, but instead find themselves in a violent, illegal industry, cultivating cannabis and having to sleep where they work.

Consider the thousands of women trafficked globally, and in particular from regions such as eastern Europe, who are forced into prostitution by gangs that make them drug dependent in order to maintain control of their lives, forcing them to work to feed their habit by seeing up to 30 clients daily.

The British have for years been among the world’s biggest cocaine users, ranking fourth in the top 20. The trend is primarily linked to our wealth. Britain has a highly sophisticated drug supply networks, linked with cartels that import thousands of kilos each year. This market ensures that both the criminal networks at the top of the chain and the lower level street gangs are profitable enterprises with an ever-reducing risk of being caught due to cuts in law enforcement agencies such as police, National Crime Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

The Met crime statistics for April 2017 to April 2018 revealed that knife crime went up by 21.2% to 14,680 offences, while knife crime with injury rose by 5.7% to 4,700 offences. Gun offences went down by 4.6% to 2,435, although there was a 23.3% increase in the discharge of guns, which rose to 386 incidents.

With the world adopting the view that the war against drugs is all but lost, it is perhaps time for society as a whole, not just the UK, to look at how we defeat the blood-soaked drug traffickers by applying the same ethical principles that we apply to other consumer markets.

What we are witnessing here is something not seen for a long time, a highly experienced Met commissioner with the gumption to point publicly to the true drivers of crime and what we can do to help.

Dick is right to address this issue in a way that acknowledges we should all consider the unforeseen or easily dismissed consequences of our actions – whether deaths occur in Colombia or on the streets of the UK.



We are all too aware of the number of young people who have died this year as a result of gun or knife crime. Police have introduced the public to the concept of “county lines”, and how the practice is fuelling wars between drug gangs who bid for control of large areas.

Just a few years ago, London gangs controlled certain streets or car parks where they plied their trade. Now they control whole towns and villages. The penalty for those who dare to encroach is no longer being chased off. It’s a beating, a stabbing or murder, orchestrated by elders but carried out by teenagers, all to to protect ill-gotten gains: the gangs’ stash and their turf. The gangs arm themselves with weaponry ranging from knives to semi-automatic pistols and military-grade weapons.

We need to consider the wider implications of drug abuse, to educate people about the suffering caused by the production and trafficking of drugs, and by end-users. Drug networks are sophisticated entities that operate like a business. They have their CEOs, directors and strategists whose job it is to sell a commodity. The better the quality, the better the customer base; the wider the customer base, the more revenue.

Identifying a market is critical. Drug dealing is not about a hooded individual on a street corner, moving between the shadows. It is a sophisticated market. Gangs target the rich, the famous, the middle class as well as the working class. They focus on the middle class because they have the disposable income to buy significant quantities on a regular basis. “Everyone knows a friendly local drug dealer” is a phrase often heard, referring to the dealer who can be called upon at any time, day or night, to deliver to friends at a social gathering or dinner party.

But who is your local supplier? A teenager caught up in the county lines trap? The man who smiles at you while pocketing your cash, having beaten up, stabbed or in some cases murdered a rival or non-paying customer hours earlier? Or the girl being forced into the trade by the gang who trafficked her?



Cressida Dick is right to call certain drug users hypocrites and to stimulate debate among middle-class people who are so often focused on “doing what’s right” in terms of global warming, fair trade, and organic food, but imagine “there is no harm in taking a bit of cocaine”. If they can focus their minds to end the misery linked to these markets, why can’t they apply the same thinking to the drugs trade?



• Rod Austin is a journalist and former organised crime detective