As images circulated of the riots in Southport last week, many noted that the so-called “protestors” - who were reacting to the mass stabbing of eleven young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class on 29 July - were holding cans of beer. “Turning up to a vigil for three murdered young girls with a crate of cider,” one post on X read, “the victims of this tragedy are the last thing on their minds.”
Now it’s suspected that that’s not all some of them were carrying. Amid the 400 arrests for violent disorder, assault and breach of protest conditions, there have been three arrests for possession of Class A drugs.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” says Harry Sumnall, a professor of Substance Use at Liverpool John Moores University with expertise in cocaine usage who reckons the Class A in question is likely cocaine. “The highest levels of use are in men, the highest levels of use is up until the age of 24, then there’s a slight drop but it continues to the mid 30s [age range], so they fit the profile.”
Moreover, cocaine is the most popular class A drug in the UK so, statistically, it’s most likely to be coke.
“It’s the democratisation of cocaine,” agrees another drug researcher, “it’s no longer an exclusive drug. It's used across all social demographics and classes. The use [among] football fans is the most visible manifestation of that. It's very present in working class pubs and whatnot, even on weekdays. Because it's cheap, the quality is improved, you can buy a gram between a few people for an evening and it's not going to cost much more than a pint.”
Though they did also have pints. Well, cans. “I think that the connection with alcohol is really important,” says the researcher.
These days, cocaine is embedded within the far right in England. Their de facto mouthpiece, Tommy Robinson, was convicted of drug charges after he admitted to possessing 3.48 grams of cocaine with intent to supply in 2014. Meanwhile, Telegram, the app rioters are using to disseminate the details of their demonstrations, is conveniently also used for the purchase of drugs, due to its encrypted nature.
So why bring cocaine to a “protest”? “If people are going to an event where they are expecting trouble, violence, or they're expecting there to be a high level of socialisation with their in-group, then cocaine is good for that,” says Sumnall. “It's good for providing energy, focus, concentration, and reduces fatigue. So if you wanted to be alert at a public event like this, where you might be expecting aggression and confrontation, cocaine is the drug to do that.”
If this feels awfully familiar to some of the scenes after England’s loss at the Euros final in 2021, that’s not a coincidence. “Anecdotally, the use of cocaine at public events seems to be on the rise,” says Sumnall.
And with cocaine lending itself to acts of aggression, it may be making these destructive protests even worse. When police officers perform a “test on arrest” method of drug testing offenders arrested in connection with other offences, including violent offences, Sumnall says that “by far” the drug detected most often is cocaine.”
And while London firmly shut down any whiff of a riot yesterday, the far right’s anger - coke-fuelled or not - remains unchanged.
