High gear: the growth economy

Drugs, gangs, and London

Never before in history has the supply of drugs been as bounteous, as reliable, as cheap, and as high-quality as in the London of 2024. Any interested customer may, at little risk to themselves, conveniently obtain any herb, mushroom, powder, or pharmaceutical they fancy. The British appetite for drugs dwarfs our consumption of tea and coffee. The number of organised criminals is equivalent to the staffing of a large government department.

It is possible that no city on earth consumes as many drugs as London. Britain accounted for 36% of the EU drug market, and London consumed a disproportionate amount of the drugs within the UK — an outlier within an outlier. Debates about ‘decriminalisation’ have taken on a surreal quality: London is now saturated with drugs and gangs, and possession has been quietly decriminalised for many years already.

This change has come as crime reporting has been suppressed. Shrinking budgets pulled reporters out of court rooms. Judge-invented privacy laws banned the naming of suspects before they are charged. The longest lasting impact of the Leveson Inquiry has been the loss of almost all Fleet Street sources within the police. The Met, despite its astounding lack of competence in fighting crime, has been able to cut off the flow of tips and gossip from within its own ranks. What passes for crime reporting nowadays usually consists of reposting official press releases. As such, the law-abiding might only be able to sense what has been happening through the omnipresent smell of cannabis and the occasional sight of police tape, but the black market shapes and reshapes our city nonetheless.

Multiculturalism is never on clearer display than when we examine the drug market. The Albanian domination of the powder cocaine market is extensively documented. Britain’s welcome to Kosovar refugees has been rewarded with a new and unwelcome ethnic mafia. They have professionalised the cocaine trade and now dominate the entire supply chain, from importation to customer. Reliable customer service is paired with the ruthless application of horrible violence. They have nonetheless kept out of the popular imagination: rather than stabbing each other on the high street, they prefer to kidnap, torture, murder, and dismember far from public view. The result for the consumer is excellent. Much like in the rest of Europe, it is likely that, over the past decade or so, while cocaine prices have remained stable or even slightly fallen, purity has risen considerably. Suppliers are easily found via a search on Telegram. If you want cocaine at three in the morning, it will be quickly dispatched to you by an Albanian in an uninsured BMW. It is no wonder that, despite their small numbers in Britain, Albanians make up the largest foreign contingent in our prisons — and that is after many of them are deported back to Albania to serve their sentences.

The power of the Albanian Mafia has not yet reached its apex. The Albanians also increasingly dominate the cannabis farms, forcing out the Vietnamese (at least they have nail bars to fall back on). Cannabis farming is an innovation only a few decades old. It turns out that, given low energy costs (through tampered electrics), no taxes, and low (very low!) labour costs, British domestic production can outcompete foreign imports. Despite the cost of land in London, the farms proliferate in domestic houses, in secret underground caverns, and abandoned police stations. It is likely that there is more agriculture in London today than at any point in the last century.

Not that the Albanians are the only ethnic mafia in London. The Turks have their own, which is distinguished by their fondness for heroin, shootings, and corrupting public officials. The Iranians specialise in methamphetamines: the Islamic Republic is the main source for a drug used here almost entirely for gay sex parties. Even the Chinese appear, importing a cornucopia of chemicals from their home country, and playing a key role in money laundering (‘No card, we cash only’).

(The British, if they think of their Chinese neighbours at all, may be vaguely aware of a demographic division. Firstly, there are the Cantonese-speaking Hong Kongers, who mostly arrived in two waves in the ’90s and ’20s, and have settled here permanently. Then there are the Mandarin-speaking Mainlanders, usually wealthy students who keep to themselves and never seem sure why they are here. But least known of all are the poor Fujianese, only ever glimpsed in kitchens and building sites. Their numbers cannot easily be gauged, but illegal Chinese immigrants in London come almost entirely from Fujian.)

As we move down the supply chain and into less profitable substances, the demographics change and the professionalism erodes. The junkies and crackheads don’t get the full Deliveroo service. Local dealers buy in powder cocaine and heroin, and the former is converted to crack with little more than a pyrex and a microwave. At this point, the official vocabulary changes from ‘Organised Crime Group’ to ‘Urban Street Gang’, although the barriers to entry are so low that some dealers are effectively self-employed. Marketing is rudimentary: a common technique is sending out hundreds of SMS messages a day to local addicts. These are the most visible drug dealers: nowadays, the stereotype of a young black man in a tracksuit with a rambo knife in his bag is really only found at this level. They carry by far the most risk, both of arrest and injury. The daylight stabbings that have become part of daily life are both perpetrated and suffered at this tier. They are the easiest for the police to catch, in no small part because this demographic don’t simply see dealing as a job, but as an aspirational lifestyle. It is almost impossible for a normal Briton to comprehend the myopia of the typical Roadman. London’s council estates are not ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘world-wise’ but insular in the extreme. When the world does not exist outside of the M25, it makes far more sense to stab another child who is from the wrong postcode.

The street dealer also serves up cannabis, sending out menus via WhatsApp. These customers are certainly nicer to deal with. For the discerning customer, a more convenient option has lately emerged. Nobody who walks London’s streets can have failed to notice the plethora of posters and stickers advertising websites selling cannabis. Gone are the days of darknet markets, requiring the customer to download Tor and make a risky purchase in cryptocurrency. Nowadays, should you scan a QR code, you will be directed to a professional website that could as well be selling t-shirts. Add the product to your basket, check out, and cannabis will arrive in the next post. Better than Amazon!

Legalisation in the United States has allowed manufacturers to conduct exciting experiments in ‘What can we put cannabis in next?’. The British marijuana user has access to an astonishing range of cannabis products: oils, crystals, waxes, chocolates, soaps, fruits — even gummies, which tend to be popular among young school children, resulting in occasional mass hospitalisations. Its stench has supplanted London’s smog: several visitors from the East have remarked to me that it is the city’s least pleasant aspect. On the other hand, the mass demonstration of its stultifying cognitive effects has obliterated the old stereotype about enhanced creativity. The astonishingly brazen advertising tactics used by these networks makes it clear that the Met are either unwilling or unable to act.

Decriminalisation is increasingly de jure as well as de facto. Take cannabis. If you are caught in possession of cannabis, you will be given a Community Resolution: essentially, no further action. If you are caught a second time, you would be issued a Penalty Notice for Disorder, of little more consequence than a parking ticket. Being caught a third time, you may have to attend a police station to receive a formal caution. Only if you are caught in possession of cannabis four times — an incredibly unlikely circumstance, considering that there are no police operations targeting users — do you risk prosecution. And even if that freakish turn of events did come to pass, 97% of the time you walk free from court.

Even the suppliers increasingly find there is little to worry about. Fewer and fewer criminals are arrested, and fewer and fewer of those arrested are charged. Theresa May’s Modern Slavery Act 2015 — despite stiff competition, one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in the last ten years — handed a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card to any dealer unlucky enough to be caught. Even a report by the Slavery Commissioner, hardwired to defend the existing legislation, found that:

…criminals are enabled in their efforts to exploit others by the statutory defence and are coaching victims and associates alike to exploit the protections the trafficking defence offers. You have the perfect storm; motivated traffickers who know how to abuse vulnerable victims and how to exploit the statutory defence — and the systemic weaknesses enabling them to do so.

The same report contained some typical examples:

A 15 year old is frequently being arrested but is still dealing drugs on the street. He has openly told Police that they ‘can’t touch him’ since the NRM decision [identifiying him as a victim of Modern Slavery] ended the prosecution against him. He sustained significant injuries after being attacked with a machete…

This is an individual who historically [was identified as victim of Modern Slavery] (aged 15 years) but has since continued to grow their local drug network to now becoming a suspected operator of their own county line. The issue here is that this non-recent NRM decision is still bought into play when they come to our attention today and this makes the securing of a criminal justice outcome difficult. This person (now 17 years) is now believed to no longer be in any duress.

Defendants playing the ‘Modern Slavery’ defence don’t need to inform on their supposed bosses, or give any detail identifying them. A vague account of duress is often enough to see a prosecution abandoned.

Even if a dealer is unlucky enough to end up in jail, they often find their lifestyle can continue substantially unaltered. The Prison Service is shot through with corruption: smartphones proliferate, cell blocks stink of cannabis, and many female guards (and even governors) are happy to provide sexual favours. Some jailed drug dealers are even able to carry on controlling their drug lines from jail, directing runners from the safety and comfort of His Majesty’s Prison.

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We have arrived at the worst of all possible worlds: untrammelled demand and rampant criminal supply. On the last estimate (seven years ago), £9.4 billion was spent on drugs each year in England and Wales, triple national spending on tea and coffee. The cost to society of drugs was estimated at £19 billion. From 2012/13 to 2017/18, 56% of London’s homicides were drug-related.

Crime certainly pays: even low-level drug dealers have a tax free salary that can beat much of the respectable middle class. Dealers can go decades without being troubled by the police. Washing dirty money is made easy by Companies House’s extraordinarily lax system of company creation, which charges almost nothing for registering a company, has no identity checks whatsoever for directors (meaning you can just use a fake identity), does not require proof that you own or have the right to use the registered office address, and is in fact legally not even permitted to try to comply with anti-money laundering checks. The main difficulty tends to come with buying a home: stiffer (or at least existent) anti-money laundering checks at this point can mean that even fairly successful drug dealers are still stuck in their baby-mumma’s council flat, or renting in Royal Arsenal Woolwich or New Providence Wharf. Nonetheless, those further up the chain are usually able to invest in Home County houses, flats in Dubai, and villas in their homelands. Those at the bottom of the food chain have a far more grim existence: illegal immigrants locked in a warehouse watering cannabis plants, or young teens ordered to stuff gear into an orifice, travel down to some god-forsaken town, and serve up from a traphouse.

Laundering their reputations is easier still. The rapper ‘Digga D’, at time of writing in prison for drug importation, is due to headline the Wireless festival later in July. His peer, ‘Skrapz’, is set to perform at Reading festival, despite having been convicted of covering up a murder a few months ago. The journalistic, cultural, and political mainstream has developed a dangerous fetish for professional criminals.

The full scale of organised crime in London can be hard to picture. But occasionally we get glimpses. Four years ago, the French and Dutch police hacked EncroChat, an encrypted communications network used exclusively by organised crime. For months, they were able to read and capture the messages sent on the network. In Britain alone, over 3,000 people have been arrested so far, and the cases continue to pop up in court. One of those caught was Nana Oppong, who had used the device to plan the murder of a rival. Oppong had been tried for three previous murders, and had gotten off each time. The EncroChat hack is one of the most audacious and successful in the history of policing, unearthing thousands of hitmen and mob bosses. Yet its scope was narrow, looking at only one communications network for a matter of months. It is unsettling to think about how many more gangsters remain untouched.

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The situation is bad, and it is getting worse. We should not, however, pretend that our problems are insoluble. As with almost all of Britain’s issues, this is the result of political decisions. We must not indulge in coping mechanisms: ‘Well, every country has crime’; ‘Prohibition never works’; ‘It could be worse, just look at [country X]’. As many countries have demonstrated, it is perfectly possible to reduce drug use and the associated criminality to the point of irrelevance. Better things are possible.

A government interested in solving this problem would have, broadly speaking, two paths to choose from. The first is legalisation: creating a controlled, regulated market for drugs. We could abrogate the various UN treaties that require prohibition, and return Britain to the state of affairs prior to the First World War, when cocaine and opium could be bought from the local chemist. This has a certain libertarian appeal. There may also be financial benefits: police resources could be directed towards other crimes, and the newly legalised drugs could be heavily taxed, much like tobacco and alcohol. Perhaps conveniently available amphetamines would resolve our ‘productivity puzzle’.

These are some very real upsides. But experiments with decriminalisation in North America have also made the downsides obvious. The streets of cities on the West Coast now overflow with human beings decaying alive. During our last era of legal drugs, individuals had fuller responsibility for their own health, housing, and behaviour. Today, the taxpayer would be unable to bear the cost of the inevitable increase in drug consumption. Legalisation would have to be paired with a radical reordering of our social safety net and criminal justice system — something that, while not impossible, is unlikely to happen any time soon.

The alternative is suppression. Contrary to tired arguments about Prohibition and Al Capone, it is perfectly possible to stamp out drug use. The requisite policy is significant penalties for possession. For decades our approach has been to go after the dealers, the higher up the chain the better. This is appealing on a moral level. Addicts are usually pretty pitiable characters, and it feels right to devote resources to those who profit from human misery. This has been a total failure. Draconian punishments for suppliers are a necessary but insufficient precondition for success. Consider the market dynamic. Demand drives supply. When a drug dealer drops off — into prison, fleeing to Dubai, or stabbed — the opportunity for profit will inevitably tempt another to step into their place. If a drug user stops — due to punishment, overdose, or a change in habits — there is no equivalent. A young man might choose to start selling heroin if the local big man goes to prison; nobody is so drawn to taking drugs.

Targeting drug users would be a radical shift. Initially, it would probably be unpopular. For decades there has been a real effort to destigmatise drug use. Locking up users will attract outrage from the NGO-media-legal class that must be overcome. The courts and the police — on which responsibility implementing such policies will fall — will also most likely push back. On a purely practical level, the number of crack and heroin users is more than three times the current prison population, and prisons are currently filled with drugs anyway. The immediate priority for any government who wants Britain to kick its habit is to fix the prisons: firstly, through a massive expansion of the estate; and secondly, by purging the corrupt elements in the prison service. Crack and heroin represent 86% of the costs associated with drug use.

On strategic grounds, the campaign should start here. A Progressive regime should begin its reform programme with long sentences for for ‘petty’ acquisitive crimes such as shoplifting or burglary — crimes which are overwhelmingly committed by the worst addicts — before expanding to the penalisation of the more general anti-social behaviour associated with users. The asylums must also be expanded. As state capacity is rebuilt, the campaign could gradually broaden out to punishing simple possession. Each drug will need to be stigmatised and eliminated in turn.

What happens if we do not change course towards either legalisation or suppression, and instead continue along our current route of ‘decriminalisation’? This is the path Labour is almost certain to follow: the new Minister for Prisons has praised the Dutch approach to incarceration. The Netherlands has always been Europe’s most futuristic country: every trend emerges there first. The omens are grim. Holland is now home to truly terrifying organised crime networks which the state struggles to contain. Efforts to bring one mob boss, Ridouan Taghi, to justice cost the lives of bloggers, journalists, relatives of witnesses, and lawyers. Decriminalisation invariably puts billions of pounds into the pockets of organised crime, and eats away at society from within. The Netherlands has become a narco-state, but at least at least their prison population is lower than ours, eh?

Crime is an open goal for any political movement. The British public are bloodthirsty when it comes to criminals; the costs to society are tremendous; and, above all, it is the right thing to do. Drugs are a tempting problem to ignore. Droning on about it makes you sound like Peter Hitchens on one of his more boring days. Many of us have used drugs and enjoyed them. Yet solving this problem — whatever form that solution takes — is essential to breaking the power of organised crime and making the British people secure in their person and property once more.