Where should we draw the line? (photo by Barry Lewis/In Pictures via Getty Images)
For the past year, while the majority of Britain has been working from home, an often overlooked but, in his own way, “essential” worker has continued to go about his business: the neighbourhood drug dealer.
That isn’t to say that it has been an easy ride. Britain’s first lockdown seriously dented drug dealers’ freedom of movement, and their supply has been hit by a number of significant domestic and international drug busts. In the world of narcotics, at least, the past year will no doubt come to be remembered as an era of stockpiling, increased prices and lower quality cocaine as dealers “trod” heavily on their wares with more cutting agents — not to mention the resulting boom in the cannabis market.
Yet in many ways, today’s itinerant drug dealers, able to roam from door-to-door, are perfectly suited to life in lockdown — and that’s a thoroughly modern phenomenon. Once upon a time, punters, users, abusers, junkies and “nitties” (those itching, scratching, semi-feral addicts) had to venture out of their homes and scurry off into the night in search of a little dope.
In the early eighties, when I was barely a teen, I had a friend who wanted to score some weed and made me traipse with him to a “shebeen”, or illegal drinking club, operating out of a dingy squat in Stratford, East London. The place was occupied almost exclusively by Rastas who were either smoking big fat spliffs or selling tiny bags of weed. My pal, despite still being in his school uniform, scored a £5 bag containing a few buds, twigs and seeds and rolled a crappy joint. I took a puff of it, coughed my guts up, pulled a “whitey” and ran out of the gaff as paranoid as hell to the toilets in Stratford Shopping Centre, where I locked myself in a cubicle until I calmed down.
In seventies and early eighties London, Rastas were to selling weed what the Royal Mail was to postal delivery services; they had a near monopoly on the trade, certainly at street level. In the absence of hydroponic technology, globalisation and, it must be said, what would become the British public’s penchant for exotic and eclectic highs, weed was a cottage industry with deep roots, and routes, to Jamaica. Anything stronger was the preserve of bohemians, the clubbing elite and the rich and famous. Even then, unless you were well-connected or in the entertainment industry, if you wanted drugs you needed to go out of your way to get them.
But in the decades since, Britain’s love affair with narcotics has taken on a whole new meaning. According to the Home Office’s latest figures, roughly three million people took recreational drugs in England and Wales last year, with around 300,000 in England opting for opiates and/or crack cocaine. In terms of valuation, the illicit drugs trade is worth an estimated £9.4 billion a year — which makes it larger than the UK music industry (£5.2 billion) and gaming industry (£2.9 billion) combined, and with an annual turnover bigger than several major high street chains, including Boots (£6.7 billion) and Primark (£5.9 billion).
Given that chronic weed, amphetamine and cocaine use appears to be as British as a Sunday roast, it’s no wonder that, in recent years, enterprising foreigners have moved into the UK drug market, “sniffing” easy money to be made. Indeed, thanks in part to the EU’s obsession with freedom of movement, its porous borders and, it must be said, our police forces’ flawed racial profiling which dictates that only black people sell, buy and consume drugs, Eastern European dealers have been able to force their way into a lucrative market.
Eastern European dealers sussed early on that consumption is Britain’s metier, and they made hay with it. While scrawny British inner-city “hood rats” thought riding around on stolen scooters selling crack was a major step-up from dealing on street corners and council estate stairwells, Serbian and Albanian dealers were taking orders on WhatsApp and Telegram encrypted messaging services and delivering to punters’ doors in modest, but comfortably air-conditioned saloon cars. These dealers innovated the use of social media, with many advertising flash sales and “buy two, get one free” offers to regular clients, using price differentiation to offer “standard” and “premium” cocaine. Most importantly, they offered a reliable, consistent and relatively risk-free service.
In other words, they run their “phone operations” like businesses, rather than trap house outtakes from Top Boy. This contrast in modus operandi between Eastern European and native drug dealers is down to what you might call a differing account of “psychological subjectivity”. In other words, if you don’t think and act like a drug dealer, you won’t get caught like one.
Only last week, for instance, the Metropolitan Police publicised an operation it led which resulted in 154 arrests in London relating to County Lines activities: Officers “were also proactively on the look-out for suspicious activity in their efforts to tackle violence, the Met’s top priority,” it added. Two operative words here, “suspicious” and “violence”, provide a clue as to why Eastern European dealers have been so successful; they were, for a long time, absent from their crime narrative in Britain.
Just as with stereotypes surrounding the Italian mafia, Jamaican Yardies and Chinese triads, the image of the black-clad Bond-villain Russian invariably springs to mind when we talk about any criminal east of Berlin. But while Eastern European gang members are no strangers to violence, many of the dealers I’ve spoken to are singularly focussed on doing their job, and therefore distance themselves from any violence which may attract unwanted attention. Our conversations are usually prosaic: about football results, their children back home and, increasingly, how the traffic congestion caused by the closure of some bridge over the Thames is affecting their delivery times. If anything, Eastern European dealers in London operate more like Uber than the Barksdale Crew from The Wire.
And since lockdown, this work ethic has made it easier for them to adapt. One dealer I know is pretending to be a more orthodox “essential worker”, wearing a hi-vis jacket and driving around in a van as a cover. Others have changed their shift times, now usually working from just 4pm-6pm or weekends only. Some have even upped sticks and left the UK altogether, putting their phone operations on a skeleton staff until the much-anticipated summer boom.
One of the savvier young London dealers I know — who recently escaped a county lines operation after a “nitty” held him up for his stash with a hypodermic needle, and was then nearly stabbed to death by the gang he now owed money to — has gone “freelance”. He bought a scooter and uses a Deliveroo box as a cover story to sell crack, a move that’s become so common that the Met have started to randomly “stop and search” delivery bike riders.
More recently, though, the Met — perhaps realising that it could prove more fruitful — has decided to target the middle-class drug trade. When I worked as a producer on the Channel 5 documentary series Gangland, a constant refrain I heard from dealers was that gentrification is contributing to Britain’s ever-expanding drugs market. The Government certainly agrees; last week, it was revealed that it plans to launch a middle-class “information campaign” to make “snorting cocaine as socially unacceptable as drink-driving”.
Certainly their value to dealers cannot be underestimated. Aside from being spendthrift, reliable and creditworthy, middle-class punters are mavens when it comes to spreading the word about who’s got A-grade cocaine or ecstasy. If you’re a dealer, being able to boast that you have doctors, lawyers and media types in your contacts book is certainly a nice marketing touch. After all, the bourgeoisie love nothing more than knowing they’re in good company, even if they are contributing to a trade that results in Mexican gang members being decapitated every now and again.
I learned just how valuable middle-class coke users are during the 2019 general election. Having got wind of a high-profile political client who was being “served up” by the friend of a source, I attempted to broker a deal with one of Fleet Street’s finest for the story. But at the last minute, the drug dealer baulked at my offers of fame, fortune and the opportunity to change the course of British political history. “Bro, it ain’t worth it,” he told me. “He’s my best customer.” When it comes to middle-class dealing, discretion is key; another reason why the professionalism of foreign dealers sells itself.
Just days before lockdown, The Sun reported that “London has become a hotbed of international criminals – from Albanian cocaine kingpins and African street gangsters to Turkish Cypriots”. When I asked an old source in the East End scene if this was yet more tabloid bluster, he simply said: “I moved to Essex to get away from that shit. Now they’re moving in here. You can’t compete with them.”
In some ways, I suppose it’s to be expected that a capital city of nine million people has its fair share of foreign dealers — just as it has its fair share of foreign businessmen. And with the UK bracing itself for the end of lockdown restrictions this summer, no doubt these “essential” workers are already preparing for the inevitable narco-bonanza that will follow.
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SubscribeWhilst I can appreciate the light heartedness of the piece, I think it rather underestimates the impact on lives and the knock-on impact on society. It also seriously underestimates the violence used by the Albanians in particular. In addition, the huge profits they make are invested in undermining other parts of civilised society. The UK has no relationship with Albania so why these people are even allowed to be here is a mystery (many came as native Albanian refugees from Kosovo and started chain migrations). Every major UK port of entry is controlled by them with one exception, Liverpool, which is protected by the IRA. Also, whilst I agree that middle class coke users are an easy target to poke fun at, why does nobody ever poke fun at the gay “chemsex” users who are an enormous part of the market? To keep things light hearted, who can forget the prodigious drug consumption of the Reverend Flowers, chairman of the Co-Op, whose chemsex orgies included every known drug under the sun.
Yes, I have often made the point that the Albanians did not even have the right to be here, Albania not being in the EU. But New Label wanted to rub our noses in, well, coke I suppose, so here they are. No less than 700 of them are to be found in our jails, an astonishing number given the overall number of Albanians in the UK. And wasn’t it an Albanian woman who killed that little girl in a park in Bolton quiet recently?
As for the light heartedness of the piece, if you didn’t laugh at what the governing and media classes have done to the country, you would have to take your own life.
There’s a HELL of a lot of people here who don’t have the right to be here. And even Our Legal Aid [sic] system protects them from deportation.
No less than 700 of them (Albanians) are to be found in our jails
Do the warders fear them in prison as much as the police on the street?
Balkan men tend to be a bit different despite the insistence of the 1990s media in calling the Yugoslav conflict a war in the heart of Europe.
We were having a family dinner in our Belgrade garden one evening when we heard several gunshots nearby. Sounds like someone being murdered, my wife said. She was right we discovered next day.
The father of one of my children’s nursery school friends was blown up by a car bomb. It was treated as “stuff happens”.
It may come as a surprise to you but car bombs and executions were also common place in this country up until the 1990s, particularly in the corner known as Northern Ireland. Always amazes me how little people know. We have a city in our country with a wall running down the middle to separate religious factions.
Best of luck to any of our police who are up against that mob.
I have no idea why we tolerate these people the way we do. It makes my usual centre left tendencies fly out of the window when I think about these scumbags.
I was shocked with the Reverend Flowers case. The aspect that upset me most was the betrayal of trust. If you can’t trust a drug addicted rent boy who can you trust?
Ah yes, Mr Flowers the Chemical Methodist! A few years the deputy headmaster of St Benedict’s School in London was busted for the illegal photos on his computer. He was also a keen party goer, mostly of the coke’n’sodomy kind of party. But he was not separately prosecuted for his drugs use. I guess the police figured that he was punished enough by losing his well paid career.
An interesting and entertaining read. I particularly like the story of the guy disguising himself in a high-vis jacket and van. Doubtless some of them are masqeurading as Covid Marshalls.
Of course, we all know that the Albanians cornered much of trade some years ago in their own ruthless way. The police, as ever, seem to be a little behind.
Well, they have thought crime to deal with, which is soooo much more important
I heard that the Yardies used to run the show until the Albanians moved in. The Yardies tried to resist and then black corpses appeared around London.
Well to the extent that the Yardies and their families voted, they probably voted for New Label and mass immigration. So, unintended consequences.
‘The Government certainly agrees; last week, it was revealed that it plans to launch a middle-class “information campaign” to make “snorting cocaine as socially unacceptable as drink-driving”.
So, more of our money wasted. It did occur to me a long time ago that a campaign with the headline ‘Drugs kill’ and visuals of the young people etc shot dead in Mexico might have some impact. But probably not.
Young people being stabbed to death in London doesn’t seem to have much impact, so I agree probably not.
We have had a number of knifings (most are probably drugs related) in Reading. There is a shock-horror report in the local media, then life goes on. Like World War 1 casualties in quiet sectors of the front – “normal wastage”.
But imagine the impact of a dead dog which had found some cocaine and accidentally sniffed it. Front page of every newspaper.
That is because animals are innocent and do not choose to become drug addicts. Such a dog is a victim of his/her feckless human owners. Animals do not have free will.
Humans have FREE WILL and are therefore guilty of whatever bad choices they make and guilty of choosing to take drugs.
I do not buy into the theory that people are victims of whatever it may be. Free will, again. No one is forcing anyone else to take drugs – or drink alcohol. You makes your choices and you pays the price.
“our police forces’ flawed racial profiling which dictates that only black people sell, buy and consume drugs,”
You make it seem non-natives buy it, and enterprising, entrepreneurial, migrants sell it. I have rarely read a more troubling article on UK because the whole, between the lines, message. From the dialect and descriptions you used for dealers one would also wonder if the Police would have grounds to be as you say they are.
“In seventies and early eighties London, Rastas were to selling weed what the Royal Mail was to postal delivery services; they had a near monopoly on the trade, certainly at street level.”
That’s odd because I lived in London during those times and never knew Rastas selling, it was white guys, and I knew a bit, I think the writer embellishes. And The East Europeans being unknown for their violence and crime?
“as to why Eastern European dealers have been so successful; they were, for a long time, absent from their crime narrative in Britain.”
The Sun, 11 Aug, 2019 “At least 40,000 villains from Eastern Europe have crossed the Channel, turning the county — and neighbouring Kent — into terrifying crime dens.” https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9697274/albanian-gangs-south-east-england-europes-crime-hotspot/ they say the Eastern Gangs are even getting the local criminal gangs pay them protection money they are so ultra-violent, and run the majority of Prostitution, Albanians are 1 in 10 of the foreigners in British Jails….The article says the police leave them alone to street deal (I know they fear them). The Guardian writes on such too.
I wonder if the writer is too close to his topic to be unbiased.
But then I have been around a great deal, enough I have seen the drug world, and criminal world/mindset, enough to find them very disturbing and to have a much more law and order view. I have more affinity to the thinking of Duterte than Cressida d**k so may not be the best to review this somewhat sympathetic article..
The West are losing the War on Drugs, as they are losing the War on Terror. The US & UK politicians from the late 90’s onwards who waged those wars so unsuccessfully have now moved on to the War on CoVid, sensing more money to be skimmed off.
The fact that they were so incompetent is one thing. We vote them out, and get another lot in. However they hang around like a bad smell, treated as Wise Elders by our media, when they should be tarred and feathered for the permanent damage that have caused to the West.
Drug addiction makes people poor, keeps them poor, creates chaotic parents whose children often turn into delinquents and worse, criminalises generations of young people. Then the cycle continues, trickling down the generations. If we want to tackle extreme poverty, we need to tackle drugs.
Unlike alcohol, the quantity of drugs in circulation can’t be measured and there is no tax contribution to help fund the problems caused by drugs, health or social. Legalisation has to seriously be considered.
The media avoid the subject, preferring instead to deflect it by demonising pensioners who drink alcohol. Notice how the role of recreational drugs in Covid sufferers is never mentioned. Dare I say this is because many of the media, once clubbers, regularly indulge in recreational drugs themselves? At least we’re beginning to recognise the role of middle-class drug users in fuelling the problem of county lines gangs and deathly violence.
We can’t solve the problem if we don’t acknowledge it so it’s welcome that this Government and the Leader of the Opposition realise the stakes.
Drug addiction criminalises generations of young people? Surely it’s drug laws. I and many of my contemporaries were criminalised for smoking cannabis, which hardly led us to respect the law, especially when we saw police and courts almost approving of drink-driving on the ridiculous grounds that alcohol is not a drug.
I was never convinced the premium was any better than the regular.
Another angle is that we are all hypnotized.. those overperforming are parents. Every time I am going to the park, underage students are smoking cannabis in plain sight.. I am shocked.. Political parties, teachers’ unions, MPs, doctors, and the so-called professionals have only one project: to keep corona for longer as excuse to control our lives, bully us all, enjoying real time tortures. Meanwhile the students are being treated as useless and unwanted, and Must be controlled thus the masking, testing- tracking… as for parcels, to get used to the idea that their body is NO longer personal and private, behaving as sick makes better public health for those receiving salaries.. Is it only me I see the hypocrisy?
What those in power need to acknowledge is that Prohibition in the USA proved, one could say, a bit of a minor flop. Also it aided considerably the American mafia to gain their all consuming, all controlling, tentacle strangling grip; a grip they still hold today almost a 100 years after prohibition was dumped. Just a thought.
How fooled was I by the headline?
When I saw the headline appear in an email, I first thought that it was about Big Pharma. So, I clicked on it only to discover that it is not!
Or is it?
Now there is no risk to liberty and career via convictions for possession the ABC1s are good customers, pay well and don’t whine for credit. Back in the day when hash, junk, coke etc would cost someone their jobs/kids they were not such a good bet – far more likely to grass and not very good at being discreet, especially if off their heads. I expect in time most states will follow Portugal, Norway, Oregon etc and start taking the harms of drug misuse seriously. Even Jamaica de-criminalised weed recently. Britain will be among the last to do so because we need all the funny money for our financial services sector.
“Yet in many ways, today’s itinerant drug dealers, able to roam from door-to-door, are perfectly suited to life in lockdown — and that’s a thoroughly modern phenomenon.”
Not really that modern – what about Tom Lehrer’s “old dope pedlar”?
(“Doing well, by doing good”)
I wrote a facetious reply to this. On a more serious note, go any of these drug users take any interest in or responsibility for the problems caused by their large-scale illegal drug use?
How on earth do Albanian gangs manage to operate here so openly? They shouldn’t be here!!! Deport and/or jail anyone selling, supplying, dealing drugs. Cut off the supply. Harshly. Maybe it is time to legalise weed in the same way as alcohol. The Govt gets the tax, it takes the illicitness out of it, it has medicinal properties. Focus attention on the hard drugs that really do ruin lives. And zero tolerance for sellers and suppliers. I am sick and tired of this idea nothing can be done, it can, it’s just that the solutions are unpalatable in our politically correct world. If it were me I’d go medieval on their asses, but that’s maybe why I am not in charge 😉
As for the Albanians and perhaps others, they have Greek/EU passports and Greek-like names, and that is why many of them are over here. There are though, hardworking family people among them, and they baptize their children with Greek names. Of course many can be done to preventing addictions .. I would like to give an example to somehow portrait the mindset of those ruling our lives. We all have witnessed the ongoing campaign against cigarettes.. But.. what is the aim?.. is it not to turn the youngsters’ attention to evermore addictive drugs and habits? And by making them fashionable trends? What is the connection with the entertainment/music industry? How the inner mind images we are forming right now, due to the 24/7 injection-violence misrepresented as public health? affecting our mental health as we get used of needles as equal to food? Why injection is distorted as the means to our freedom?!! ..ha ha ha.. Another example.. how much can we expect or at all.. from teachers and other ‘professionals’ to help young people, when they do agree, obey or obliged by law to teach 11-year-olds of the many sexes .. and making them stand in front of their peers in assemblies etc, shouting ‘I am trans….’… and so forth?