Miller and colleagues at the Scottish Crime & Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) reckon the average purity of Scottish street level cocaine is now only 5%.
Seizures of kilo bricks – which have still to be bagged up for street sale – with just 1% of the drug among the benzocaine are not uncommon. This compares with average purity levels of 25% in England – although there, too, gangsters have cottoned on to the profits to be made by wholesale adulteration of the product.
would be easily duped into believing benzocaine was cocaine because of the already low purity of the drug. He said: "People who have never had good quality cocaine would have no reference point for what to expect."
Drug dealers have tried this kind of "placebo" trick before. For years they sold animal worming tablets in Scotland as ecstasy, depressing the market for the drug. Last year the real product reappeared, sparking widespread talk of "super-strength E" because the pills were much more potent than the fakes.Kenny Simpson, a veteran expert at the SCDEA, has watched what he calls the "sands" of drug trends change many times over the years.
He said: "We now really have two markets for cocaine – one for the real thing and another for a heavily adulterated product. Unless you are very well connected - by the time you get your cocaine, it will have been butchered in to oblivion.
"I have no doubt there are people out there paying £40 a gramme for benzocaine with cocaine traces. We now have a whole generation who don't know what good quality coke is.
"But the organised criminals are still making the money. There are dealers exploiting dealers and dealers exploiting users. There is exploitation throughout the whole chain of supply."
The United Nations lists Scotland as having the highest per-capita number of cocaine users in the world. What it does not say is how much of the cocaine being used is real. But the market for white bags of powder is enormous.
Senior police officers are understood to be lobbying behind the scenes for the governments north and south of the Border to hit benzocaine traders.
Chinese manufacturers sell the product cheaply through websites such as Alibaba.com. This is perfectly legal. But law enforcement sources believe importers and wholesalers should have to – at the very least – prove the end user of the product is legitimate.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill is sympathetic. A spokesman for the Scottish Government yesterday said MacAskill had lobbied the Home Office – responsible for regulating both controlled drugs such as cocaine and pharmaceutical products like benzocaine – on the issue.
The spokesman said MacAskill had written to "express concern over the lack of legislative consistency and clarity in reducing the supply and importation of cutting agents and to ask what actions are being taken to tackle the problem at a UK level".
He added: "MacAskill intends to discuss this issue with a view to working with partner organisations to ensure a robust system is put in place to tighten the controls on pharmaceutical agents – by legislation or by other means."
yuzde 5 ne ulan, orospu cocuklari, gagfa gibi bebeler yuzde 5 ile mi buyuyor yani,
Gagfa ne düşüyorsun bu konuda? Eylem yapmamız gerekiyor, tüketici hakları falan.
Azer kardeş iki yorumunu alalım, yüzde 5 ne demek ulan? Orospu çocukları.
@Anon
"But the organised criminals are still making the money. There are dealers exploiting dealers and dealers exploiting users. There is exploitation throughout the whole chain of supply."
bu.. öyle bir dünyada yaşıyoruz ki torbacının yancısı, yancısının da yancısı var. her el değiştiğinde bi tırnak atılsa zaten ortada bir sikim kalmıyor. kokaini geçtim eroinde çok fark ediliyo bu olay. içinde nescafe mi dersin, ağrı kesiciler mi dersin, taş dökücüler mi, diş parlatıcılar mı vs vs o yüzden iyi bir kanalın yoksa %5le falan yetinmek zorundasın. bazı mal sahipleri de saf olarak vermek istemiyor millet kafayı yakıcak okuycaklar bizi falan diye, devir çok kötü herkes götünün derdine düşmüş olan maddeye oluyor. demem o ki narkotik hayata, ekonomiye, kimyaya ve dünyaya bir başkaldırıdır, mantık aranacak bir alan değil.
@anon: yazıdan çok attığın resim ilgimi çekti birkaç tane daha atsana keş kardeşim
