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Weekly updates


So apparently the British really love their cocaine.

They love it so much in fact, that they have been consuming (then disposing of) enough of it to contaminate their national water supplies. Traces of the drug were found in four sample sites across the UK’s drinking water reserves by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, even after treatment and purification.

The study doesn’t imply that Brits should race down to their local dam for a free hit though. The traceable amount of coke is reportedly hundreds of thousands times below the level need to have any effect on a human.

Although the levels aren’t anywhere near strong enough to be getting the British population unwittingly high, commentators in the UK say it points to a serious underlying problem. According to the charity DrugScope, there are 180,000 dependent users of crack cocaine in the UK and round 700,000 people between the ages of 16 and 59 take drugs ever year.

“We have the near highest level of cocaine use in western Europe,” an analyst from the drug policy think tank, Transform told the Sunday Times. “It has also been getting cheaper and cheaper at the same time as its use has been going up.”

And it doesn’t stop with their water. In 2011, police drug experts revealed that 11% of all UK banknotes tested positive for traces of cocaine. I wonder if British air has coke particles in it too…

[Via.]

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