Katy Balls Katy Balls

Powder to the people

Drug dealers, too, are having to change in the face of the on-demand economy

issue 29 August 2015

It’s Notting Hill Carnival this weekend. Two days of skanking, dutty dancing and daggering (the dance, rather than the weapon).

No carnival experience would be complete without rum punch and jerk chicken, or for that matter crime, cannabis and cocaine. Drugs are part of the fun at Europe’s biggest street festival. There were 76 drug arrests at the festival last year, and 88 arrests made before the party even started as part of a dawn raid seizing machine-guns and crack.

Not that partygoers are about to let a little thing like the law get in the way of their bank holiday. A survey earlier this summer from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs claimed London is the city with the highest concentration of cocaine in sewage in Europe. If you sample weekend sewage only, Amsterdam overtakes us, but we can raise our heads high as the most prolific habitual users on the continent.

So, boom times for drug dealers? ’Fraid not.

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