Is cocaine driving the British riots?

Easy highs have become a national addiction.

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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”.

It appears that the national game, the national mood, the national drug and nationalist politics are falling into some grim synchronicity. But to anyone who railed a line of 80-per-cent-proof gear in a West End wine bar in 1983, this may have come as a surprise. Cocaine was never meant to be the fuel of the masses, and yet it has become so in some style. There are myriad theories as to why the disco drug has morphed into this everyday mood-propellant. Scientific types will point to its seismic, highly addictive effects on our neurotransmitters; experts in the drug market note the steady, affordable pricing and relative increases in purity and strength; while sociologists et al claim long working hours, stagnant wages and various other social malaises have played their part.

But what’s less understood is how it seems to harmonise with the British psyche – perhaps more so than any other nation on Earth. Because while cocaine is taken everywhere from Aarhus to Auckland, in Britain, it’s become part of the culture. It’s in football terrace chants and pop music, referenced on Have I Got News for You and Instagram Reels alike. At one point, two members of the cabinet had openly admitted to taking it – one of whom was the serving prime minister. Toilet cisterns across the country are lined with gravel, and there have even been stories about trace levels in the London water supply. Most of the time, this is all fairly innocuous – just another symptom of a “drug native” society. But when tensions between communities are simmering, it can ignite like a bottle of Ronsonol on a cheap barbecue.

To understand how drugs and societal issues interact, you first have to understand what cocaine does to the human mind. Generally, people take the drug to feel better about themselves, to induce that whooshing sensation of confidence and invincibility. It heightens your environment, it allows you to connect with others, it brings you towards some collective feeling. If alcohol is the social lubricant, then cocaine is social dynamite. Yet it also has the power to bring the roof crashing down, possessing a royal flush of bad mental health properties: paranoia, rage, delusion, paranoia, psychosis and even hallucinations.

Although coke has a long-standing reputation as the “drug for people who don’t want to get high”, it can lead you to decisions and actions that are every bit as dangerous as any from a sheet of acid. Occasionally, these delusional bursts of confidence can lead to life-defining questions, such as “Reckon I can jump over that wall?” or “What the f**k is that bloke looking at?” And while these thoughts are less likely to manifest badly at a fashion week party, if you’re scrolling through Discord channels loaded with nationalist vitriol and ugly rumours – you might just do something very stupid indeed. Here, perhaps, cocaine reveals itself as the imperfect accelerator for a troubled populace.

Yet, none of that explains the members of genteel society who use cocaine as a chemical toast to their success, the accompaniment to promotions, cocktails, their place in the tasteful end of our culture – the people who still use it like it’s 1983. Nor does that explain its presence almost everywhere else. Because while cocaine may indeed be “fuelling the right”, it also sustains everything from student nights to Pride events to literary bashes to music festivals to golf tournaments and suburban barbecues, just out of view of the kids.

As someone who spent the earlier part of their career writing about British nightlife, I can tell you I’ve seen Swansea hooligans in Blood & Honour T-shirts racking up sniff, and I’ve also seen more than a few “leading lights of the left” getting stuck in too. These riots may prove that cocaine is the drug of the bad-vibe summer. Yet, as Charli XCX attests with her “Should we do a little key?/Should we have a little line?” lyric in “365” – it’s also the drug of “Brat summer”. All of which suggests that what we are looking at is the result of 30-odd years of normalisation and a steady increase in accessibility. If you want to know how far the rabbit hole goes, you could look at last year’s revelation that 441 people between the ages of 60 and 69 were admitted to hospital with cocaine-related health issues, as well as people in their eighties and nineties.

Cocaine could well have played its part in the riots. It certainly holds some cachet in the burgeoning far-right movement. But really, it’s as everyman and indiscriminate as a pint of lager – a substance that chimes perfectly with Britain’s hair-trigger fears and its grumbling, ever-present disaffection. The “society drug” has become the people’s drug.