Christmas in Britain: it might not snow much, but there’s plenty of white powder flying about. For recreational drug dealers, the festive period is peak business. “Every December cocaine sales are up 50 per cent,” a seasoned party drug seller, who doesn’t want to be named, tells me. “The run-up to Christmas is the busiest time of year for it.” Why is that? “Because cocaine goes with drinking like roast potatoes go with turkey. They were invented for each other.”
Where there is booze, there is usually cocaine. And amid the alcohol frenzy of back-to-back work and house parties, various social events and club nights throughout December, the use of this hidden mixer rockets, not just in Britain, but across Europe. In Athens last year scientists found cocaine use doubled during the festive period, from 1kg to nearly 2kg per day. Meanwhile, a staff Christmas party held by Liverpool Football Club in the city’s famous cathedral was shut down last year after empty cocaine baggies were found in the toilets.
With its ease of use and short, energising high, it’s a drug that has seamlessly slotted into modern drinking culture, keeping people chatting and drinking for longer without the feeling of getting too “out of it”, as some do when using ecstasy, weed or psychedelics. Pubs, bars and nightclubs may have anti-cocaine-use architecture in their toilets, but the millions of extra drinks drunk due to cocaine have undoubtedly boosted the profits of the night-time economy. Mind you, being an appetite killer, it has probably dented venues’ food profits.
At Christmas, for dealers, cocaine sales start racking up from the end of November, around Black Friday onwards. While some still operate purely from word of mouth, many spread the word using cutesy, emoji-filled messages on WhatsApp and Telegram. Like a lot of marketing these days, the vibe is cheeky and chummy. It’s also very topical. For example, within hours of Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September 2022, dealers were sending out messages offering discounts, in her honour, on grams of “King Charlie”. This month, of course, messages are all about having a “White Christmas”.
According to the party drug dealer, who serves a well-off “high society” London clientele which includes A-list models, actors and rappers “but never any politicians, unless you count the rent boy who was going to visit one”, December is all about bulk deals. His usual price is a hefty £110 – double the UK average for a gram of cocaine – due, he says, to his product’s “very high quality”. But over the last month most customers have been buying “fives” [five grams], which he sells for £370.
Those on the frontline of Europe’s attempts to stem the tide of cocaine arriving onto the continent to feed the street-level dealers are well aware of the seasonal uptick in white powder.
“White Christmas, that is the period in which the white powder falls en masse from the sky,” Kristian Vanderwaeren, head of Belgium’s customs and excise department, remarked in December 2022 after officers seized ten tonnes of the drug destined for Europe’s festive party season on a cargo ship at Antwerp.
But cocaine isn’t just for Christmas. It’s also for sport – or, more to the point, to be snorted while you get drunk and watch sport. This is not surprising for a drug that has become part of the furniture in the UK, from working-class pubs to private school jamborees. Cocaine has been part of football terrace culture since the 1980s, but now it is a normalised part of going to see a game, from the lower leagues to the posh seats at Chelsea. It’s not just football though; it’s being snorted on the horse racing scene – including by some of the jockeys – and at major rugby, darts and cricket events.
“I’ve been outside of the Oval and Lords countless times,” says the dealer. “The one thing about cricket is, it’s an all-day drinking session. So the phone calls will start coming in at 2pm, 3pm, when they are getting hammered, because they’ve been drinking since 10am.”
None of the Christmas cocaine boom, nor the surge in sales resulting from huge sporting events, would be possible without the involvement of the organised crime groups responsible for moving the drug in bulk from South America into the ports of Europe. But the catch is that the vast profits being made by drug gangs from moving all this cocaine ends up destabilising countries, not just in South America but in Europe too, by spreading corruption and violence. Not so Christmassy after all.
[Further reading: Christmas time is for murder]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment