Matthew Atha:
With 24-hour hotlines and a network of couriers, the drugs trade has never been more lucrative – or violent
In the 1980s, a new substance called crack cocaine appeared on the US drug market. Highly addictive, it unleashed a massive wave of crime and disorder, which transformed American politics and culture. It is not a substance often associated with English suburbia. Yet the Home Office blames its spread from our city centres into smaller towns for rising knife crime, gun crime and robbery. So what is going on?
Crack cocaine is the solid form of powder cocaine, and making it is all too easy. It can be created relatively cheaply and safely with household equipment. Get hold of some powder, chemically remove the hydrochloride salt, let it crystallise and you have crack: a white or creamy-coloured waxy substance commonly cooked in large discs and then cut into smaller “rocks”. Its lower vapourisation temperature allows it to be smoked in a pipe with a blowtorch or rolled up with tobacco in a joint. A typical rock weighs around 150mg and costs £10.
Like other stimulants such as amphetamines, crack delivers feelings of alertness, euphoria and confidence – but what makes it so much more dangerous and addictive than its powder cousin is the strong and sudden “rush”, lasting from 15 minutes to an hour, which creates an urge to repeat the dose until supplies (or money) have been exhausted.
Most users smoke crack only occasionally, but most crack is smoked by regular users. Where cocaine is associated with rich professionals looking for an “edge”, crack addicts tend to be from marginalised groups, with chaotic lifestyles often associated with abusive childhood experiences. Often they are also heroin users: crack provides the “buzz” they no longer get from heroin, whereas heroin can help them “come down” after a crack session.
Given the ready supply of powder cocaine into Britain, crack has been with us for a long time. Until the late 1990s most stimulant users preferred amphetamines, known as “speed”. Then a major police and customs investigation named Operation Pirate took down the big speed syndicates, leading cocaine usage to double. Initially it suffered from low purity – falling from 80-90 per cent in the 1990s to just 20-30 per cent in the late 2000s – but by 2015 it had recovered to 48 per cent. Now, though it is taken by only 1 per cent of UK drug users, it accounts for 10 per cent of the UK drug market by value.
So is it growing? The evidence is mixed. Prevalence of “past year” use of crack cocaine is at a 10-year low. On the other hand, the Home Office says there has been a 14 per cent increase in the number of people presenting to treatment services with crack cocaine problems. Some areas, such as Rutland and Cumbria, have seen crack users triple since 2011, even as they halved in Middlesbrough and Nottingham.
The bigger problem is the way the trade is changing. Crack and heroin have typically been supplied by local gangs operating out of safe houses or on the streets. Users would know where to find them through word of mouth and personal introductions. Today mobile phones have become the primary vehicle for distribution – not only via text messages and phone calls, but via apps such as Instagram and Whatsapp. More recently, drug gangs have developed a sophisticated system known as “county lines” in which a mobile number is available 24 hours a day, with drugs delivered direct to users by a network of couriers covering a wide geographic area. The holder of the “drugs phone” may be located elsewhere, and the order filled by an out-of-town gang, increasing competition between suppliers.
Crack itself can drive crime when its users steal to fund their habit or succumb to temporary psychosis. But it’s suppliers who are the main cause. Turf wars are fought; large stocks of cash and drugs attract robberies; violence is used to recover drug debts or deal with disciplinary matters. Dealers and distributors are commonly armed with baseball bats or knives, with firearms available in reserve. County-line couriers are particularly vulnerable to attack by local gangs angry at the intrusion into their territory. Wherever crack goes, town or country, we should expect to see this kind of activity follow it.
Matthew Atha is an independent drug market analyst with 25 years’ experience as an expert witness