Professional people and drug use

[Beebee6]

I work in banking and moved to London a year ago for a career opportunity. I’m in my early 30s and have never thought of myself as particularly naive but I’m genuinely shocked by how many of my colleagues regularly use drugs. By drugs, I'm mostly referring to cocaine. They all talk about this very openly as if it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to do at the weekend, after work or when they have spare time without the kids. On the rare occasions when I have been along to social events after work, it’s always offered around and I appear to be the only one not partaking. None of these people are particularly ‘young’ either (most 30s-40s) and are all very successful professional people, who in my (perhaps judgemental) opinion, aren’t the typical drug using types. Some are single but many have families. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who seemed to think that this is now commonplace amongst many working professionals, particularly in the city. I’m curious as to whether this sort of thing really has become more normal and accepted now?

I was shocked when I went to uni - drug use was rife. In my halls I could think of 10+ dealers, including in our flat. They made a huge amount of money which paid their way through uni. Every group of friends was heavily into it. Most left uni and stopped or only do it occasionally, but some are still heavily into it and don't really seem to have grown up.

"Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic but if you drink a lot often enough you will be."

Any evidence for that? My impression is that some people are prone to alcohol addiction and will become addicted very easily while others can drink a lot and often and still not be alcoholics.

I work in marketing and it’s very commonplace. I also know solicitors, teachers etc who all do it although now I’m over 40 it’s definitely tailing off amongst my age group.

My friend who’s a teacher used to tell tales of the dealer coming to the staff room every Friday to deliver for the weekend!!

"I was shocked when I went to uni - drug use was rife. In my halls I could think of 10+ dealers, including in our flat."

When was this?

So many of these users seem too die at around 60 ive noticed, of heart stuff, and the link isnt made. Carry Fisher, Jhn Entwhistle and thousands more.

It would be scary, your heart racing like that, but it gives you arrogant bravery. A few times doing crack I thought 'this is it, a heart cant beat that fast and not give out'. For e its the weird sweating thats a give away, Dripping sme places then bone dry elsewhere.

Bit of a trend around here to mix crack/powdercoke and heroin/fentanyl in a needle as well. Its lunacy.

It comes into the country in little packets that people have pooed out of their bum holes. The packets then get rinsed under the tap and opened. Did no one see the article about this on the BBC . An insane amount of this stuff is contaminated with Faecal matter.

Even if the violence, misery and social mayhem caused further down the supply chain doesn’t put you off; then surely the fact that you are ingesting/ smoking/ injecting (ffs) someone else’s shit should cause a tiny qualm?

Here's the David Nutt report from 2010:
www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lancet-011110.pdf

Nutt is a professor at Imperial, he's a neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs and perhaps the most knowledgeable "drugs scientist" out there. That report was produced by him and a group of other extremely respected scientists. It makes interesting reading, and completely undermines the current UK policy on drugs

In particular their methodology was to quantify the harms to both the individual and to society of drug use. They found that the number three most harmful drug was crack. Number two was heroin. Number one was alcohol.

PS If you look at the graph of the harm caused to society by the use of different drugs on page 1561 will see that the social damage caused by cocaine use is approximately the same as that caused by cannabis. Both of them are a lot less harmful to society than alcohol.

I'm mid 30s and most people I know do it socially but don't know of anyone that does it at work (medical) I used to work in retail management and everyone was at it at work then

Those living in 90's build houses and using 90's built infrastructure are using what the drug users made for you.
The construction Industry now has the most prolific drug testing policy for a reason

My impression is that some people are prone to alcohol addiction and will become addicted very easily while others can drink a lot and often and still not be alcoholics
I think the juries still out on this one. There are some studies that suggest this but it’s not conclusive.

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Middle-class cocaine users are turning a blind eye to the link between their drug habit and sex trafficking, slavery and murder, said the former head of UK drug strategy.

“These are middle-aged, middle-class people at dinner parties,” Tony Saggers, former head of drugs threat at the National Crime Agency, told The Times on Tuesday, in his first interview since leaving the post.

“They will find sweatshops abhorrent, slave labor a brutal, terrible thing to be happening in their neighborhood, and the news that a 16-year-old has been knifed to death in London will shock them,” he added.

Britain has one of the highest rates of cocaine use in Europe, according to the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – with 4.2 percent of young adults having taken the drug in 2015.

Saggers said this was funding the exploitation of women in the sex industry, as well as slavery and gun violence.

“The consequences of buying cocaine are more abhorrent than most of what the people using it find abhorrent,” he said
In Britain, there are an estimated 13,000 victims of forced labor, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude, most of them from Albania, Nigeria, Poland and Vietnam.

Saggers said there was a lack of action among employers in tackling the prevalence and acceptance of cocaine use in some industries, particularly among banks and other companies in the City of London, Britain’s financial center.

Companies should address the problem through schemes that educate their staff about the impact of cocaine abuse on their health and wider society, he added.
Tamara Barnett, projects leader at the Human Trafficking Foundation, said “we need to do all we can to emphasize the role the public can play in eradicating human trafficking.”

“Highlighting the exploitation and abuse behind certain drug production could make some people think twice before they purchase drugs, or at least twice before boasting about doing something that has for too long been seen just as a fashionable lifestyle choice,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In 2015 a report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council found that commercial cultivation of cannabis was used to fund human trafficking.

Reporting by Zoe Tabary, editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience.Visitnews.trust.org

Middle-class skiers are turning a blind eye to the terrible consequences of skiing

Arrogant middle class skiers and snowboarders are refusing to engage with the fact that their fashionable "hobby" is a dangerous, pointless pursuit that wrecks lives and wreaks havoc across the globe. Those skiing in the French Alps alone have clock up billions of air miles between them each week. The environmental pollution this causes is responsible for numerous cancers across the globe, and for rising sea levels destroying communities around the Indian Ocean. There is then the damage done to the delicate ecosystems in their mountain "resorts".

One visit to the trauma centre at trendy Val D'Isere should be enough to put these misguided people off ever strapping bits of plastic to their feet and careering dangerously down steep slopes ever again. There are head injuries, sliced limbs from the sharp edges of the skis they are so enamoured with, unconscious people being flown by helicopter to Geneva hospital and the less lucky ones leaving in body bags.

It's time these wreckless antisocial pleasure seekers woke up to their social responsibilities.

(Click for next article: selfish meat eaters refuse to go vegan despite irrefutable evidence that their unnecessary self-indulgence is wrecking the planet and causing children to suffer hunger)

Do people get trafficked, prostituted & murdered so I can go skiing?
No they don't.

Hi Tracy, do people cooking up crystal meth in their shed cause huge environmental damage? No they don't. The point is we can be very judgey about the consequences of other people's lifestyles.

(And if you decided to criminalise skiing, I think it might get more complicated )

Well I'll always judge a cocaine user as a selfish prick.

The thought of skiing police did make me laugh though. (With flashing lights on the ski polices heads)
Anyway excuse me for my flippancy as this is a serious thread.

Hi Tracy, do people cooking up crystal meth in their shed cause huge environmental damage? No they don't.

Actually, they do. Every pound of meth creates six pounds of toxic waste, often dumped in forests or waterways.

www.fs.fed.us/lei/dangers-meth-labs.php

Fiddlesticks is that from Prof Nutt's website? I know he does a bit on horse riding/ ecstasy.

Lawyers, bankers and surgeons are some of the professions where I've known of this going on. Stressful jobs, weight on their shoulders and the need to wind down. I'm not surprised at all. Is it right? Nope. Just because you can be a functional, recreational user, doesn't mean you should do it, plus drug issues can creep up on people very quickly, especially with the kinds of stuff added in these days.

Liquid lunches are also rife in a lot of places too, usually higher up but you'd be surprised at how well people can hide it.

Drug use is effectively permitted as it is seldom policed. Drugs are de facto legalised and users face no serious consequences for buying and consuming drugs aside from being caught driving or importing.

Pleasure island indeed.

"Liquid lunches are also rife in a lot of places too,"

Not where I work. My office is on a trading estate miles from anywhere, and nowhere near a pub. Nearly everyone drives to work.

YANBU - I work in London market insurance and everyone's at it. Very much a work hard party hard culture.

I'm pretty sure most drugs come here in shipping containers, not bumholes!