As I read the comments by the London mayor Sadiq Khan on middle-class cocaine users fuelling violence in the capital last week, I was boarding a flight to Medellín, in Colombia. On Tuesday, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, followed up, calling liberal cocaine users hypocrites. Reading about this debate in a notorious cartel city, I agreed largely with Khan and Dick. But I couldn’t help but think about how much further than London the consequences reach.

As a journalist I’ve covered issues to do with youth violence in our capital, and I have also found myself around the middle classes of which Khan speaks. The links are blindingly obvious. In areas of west London, for example, where extreme wealth is juxtaposed with tower blocks and estates, it’s not surprising to see how some young people from poorer communities are seduced by the lifestyles they can see within reach.

I witnessed the effects of the drug war in Colombia, the legacy of corruption that the cocaine market financed

Violent crime in the UK rose in the past year, and the contributing factors are far more complex than simply the demand for cocaine and other drugs from the middle classes. However, estimates suggest that 875,000 people used cocaine in Britain in 2017-18, the highest number in a decade. If a gram costs up to £100, it’s safe to assume that many coke users have cash to burn.

Five years ago I arrived in Colombia to work as a teacher in a university, but also spent time working in networks engaging with sex workers and families who had lost loved ones in the violence between guerrillas, paramilitaries and narcos.

Despite the stereotypes about Colombia, cocaine was nowhere near as prevalent as people may think. There was one occasion at a football match where a guy in front of me pulled out a little knife to do a bump of coke, and I saw a few people taking the drug at a few nightclubs. But on the whole the only times I really saw it were on the rare occasions I mixed with westerners.

Medellín, the city of Pablo Escobar’s notorious drugs cartel. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

I remember going for drinks with some British graduates who were working in Comuna 13, a notoriously violent Medellín neighbourhood. We had a conversation about the legacy of Pablo Escobar’s notorious drugs cartel, and one of the women expressed her distress at the damage that it had caused for the younger generations. She aspired to work in development and seemed pretty right-on. Half an hour later she was snorting coke in the corner of the bar. It was an attitude I grew familiar with among some researchers and tourists visiting Colombia.

There’s a wilful disconnect that people seem to be able to make between their actions and the bigger picture, and it’s pretty inexcusable coming from well-off, well-educated westerners who can’t really claim ignorance. I witnessed first-hand the effects of the drug war in Colombia, the legacy of corruption that the cocaine market financed, and the severe impact that it has had on the lives of people who want nothing to do with it. When I see people I know casually contributing to that I find it infuriating. But when I have raised my concerns, just about everyone I have spoken to dismisses the connection.

Drug violence was blamed for Mexico’s record of more than 29,000 murders in 2017. Civilians are caught in the crossfire in the war on drugs, and the demand is fuelled by white, middle-class drug users in North America and Europe.

Quick Guide Mexico's war on drugs Show Why did Mexico launch its war on drugs? On 10 December 2006, Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s war on drugs by sending 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacán, where rival cartels were engaged in tit-for-tat massacres. Calderón declared war eight days after taking power – a move widely seen as an attempt to boost his own legitimacy after a bitterly contested election victory. Within two months, around 20,000 troops were involved in operations. What has the war cost so far? The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico spent at least $54bn on security and defence between 2007 and 2016. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption.



But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, over 250,000 people have been murdered, more than 40,000 reported as disappeared and 26,000 unidentified bodies in morgues across the country. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses including torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances by state security forces.



Peña Nieto claimed to have killed or detained 110 of 122 of his government's most wanted narcos. But his biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – was the recapture, escape, another recapture and extradition of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Mexico’s decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite indisputable evidence of human rights violations.



Under new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, murder rates are up and a new security force, the Civil Guard, is being deployed onto the streets despite campaign promises to end the drug war. What has been achieved? Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. Officials say 25 of the 37 drug traffickers on Calderón’s most-wanted list have been jailed, extradited to the US or killed, although not all of these actions have been independently corroborated. The biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – under Peña Nieto’s leadership was the recapture, escape and another recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP

Some would argue that the war on drugs is failing and that legalisation would take the power away from the criminals. I’m inclined to agree, but this looks unlikely to happen soon.

Colombia’s new president, the rightwing Iván Duque, will be inaugurated next week. His plans include an aggressive crackdown on coca cultivation in the country, a proposal that was extremely popular with his supporters.

It’s clear that western cocaine users have to accept they are contributing to violent crime that has left hundreds of thousands dead in Latin America over the past decades, and is spilling on to British streets.

Perhaps the carnage in Latin America is a comfortable distance away from those snorting coke at weekend parties across the UK. If your money funds the market, you are complicit in the consequences.

• Iman Amrani is a Guardian journalist