Header Image – Cold War Steve – Posted to Facebook Friday 2 August 2024
Thanks to Andre of Talking Drugs (https://www.talkingdrugs.org/about/) for alerting me to this piece.
I don’t ofter read the New Statesman these days so i would have otherwise missed this
As the weekend’s rioters make their way through Keir Starmer’s 24/7, one-stop convenience courts, and the charges of affray, assault and racially aggravated public order offences trickle through the press, you may also notice the smattering of Class A drug possession charges. So far, there’s been a 45-year-old man in Bristol, a 28-year-old in Bolton, and a 21-year-old in Sunderland.
There could be many similar charges to come, and plenty whose supply ran out before the handcuffs came down. The connection between hard drugs and far-right aggro has become a trope of British life. As fires raged and trouble spread across the country, many social media jokers blamed an unholy triumvirate of divorce, Facebook and cocaine. It is by no means a recent phenomenon either. Even Tommy Robinson has been convicted of drug possession. And in a later (deleted) video he was caught boasting about how he “scores” in every city he visits. While nobody is blaming these disturbing displays of racist violence entirely on the white stuff, it seems to be more than just a contributing factor.
There is also plenty of overlap with that other great vector of British angst: football. Robinson has made no secret about recruiting existing football firms as his foot soldiers, and on the terraces coke use is approaching omnipresence. In 2021, a study conducted by the International Journal of Drug Policy found that around 30 per cent of people polled had seen cocaine at football stadiums. The matter even made it before a parliamentary panel, with Peter Houghton from the Football Safety Officers Association telling MPs that the toilets after one Cambridge United game “looked like a launderette – there was that much powder everywhere”.
Read the full piece at
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/08/is-cocaine-driving-the-british-riots
