Cocaine Cop’s Key Clues
Cocaine using clubbers are typically 18-45 year old white male owners who own their own homes, police drug test expert PC Adrian Parsons told a Home Office enquiry on Britain’s cocaine culture, last week.
The Kent police drugs expert scans clubbers’ hands outside clubs and pubs and said he can usually spot users long before he tests them based on their belligerence and ‘extreme paranoia’ (‘especially if you try to look up their nose’).
“They are louder than normal people. They are non-stop talkers. They are arrogant and feel invincible,” PC Parsons continued, “They are happy to ridicule bystanders who are not part of their group, particularly police officers.” (Guardian; http://bit.ly/uhiF1x )
Bankers Get out of Jail Free Coke Card
Bernie Madoff
High-flying financiers in London are spending their bonuses in cocaine bars where ‘it is as easy to order a gram of cocaine as it is a mozzarella panini – all claimable on company expenses’, the Standard reported this week.
The paper chatted to bankers who boasted of blowing tens of thousands of pounds on cocaine, consumer goods and prostitutes and said they did so with implicit impunity from unusually tolerant local cops.
“To be frank, we have to concentrate resources on the crimes that most affect society. Traders and bankers taking cocaine does not affect others’ lives as much as violent crime, burglary and fraud, “ a senior City of London police source told the Standard.
“They are wealthy people who can afford drugs and don’t need to rob to fund their addiction. The only real problems are personal,” he added. (Standard: http://bit.ly/uapxOQ )
Club Drug Expert Blames Deaths on Prohibition
Doctor James Bell from London’s Maudsley hospital said that licensing drugs such as mephedrone rather than criminalizing them will ‘save lives’, this week, after 100 deaths in the last 2 years were linked to the recently criminalized drug.
“Well-adjusted people, people in good jobs, want to use drugs,” Dr Bell, head of the party drugs clinic at the hospital, told the Standard.
“People will always want to buy them. There should be some form of licensing of drugs so we know exactly how they are being manufactured and what’s going into them. Aside from being the safer option, regulation will also demystify drugs,” he added (Standard: http://bit.ly/s7nnr4 )
His comments appeared just as reformed party animal Fatboy Slim spoke euphorically of the natural highs he now finds from DJing, after quitting alcohol in 2009.
The superstar DJ/ pop star confessed to feeling terrified the first time he performed after cleaning up, admitting ’it was two or three gigs before I could dance. My hips wouldn’t do it’ though said he now enjoys ‘a completely different buzz’.
“In rehab they taught me about euphoric recall,” he told the Sunday Mirror, “When I’m in a situation where everyone is ‘having it’ I have memories of the past coming back to me. I get a natural high from remembering those times.” (Sunday Mirror: http://bit.ly/uTMOOP )
Ironically, rehab experts such as acclaimed substance abuse author Terence T Gorski, highlight euphoric recall as a danger sign for users relapsing, at least for those previously addicted to cocaine.
“Euphoric recall is a way in which cocaine addicts ‘romance the high’ by remembering and exaggerating the pleasurable experiences of past cocaine use, while blocking out painful and unpleasant aspects of the memory,” the author of Staying Sober) explains on his website.
“Dismantle Euphoric Recall,” he instead recommends.
“Carefully examine past pleasant memories about cocaine use and search for the hidden negatives in the experience. Most people find that they had no purely positive experiences while using cocaine. There were always hidden negatives.” (http://bit.ly/rLEftX )
Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff
James Palumbo- The Man from Ministry on Drugs (interview: part 1)
Click on the picture for Tancredi
“The reason I’m so against drugs is as a result of my City days where I’d see brokers who weren’t able to come in and pitch unless they’d been into the loo (toilet) and taken a line of cocaine. I just think it’s so fucking weak and pathetic.”
Chatting to Jonty Skrufff today in the restaurant of his South Kensington gym, Ministry of South founder James Palumbo is both disarmingly polite and beguilingly charming, even as his voice drips with contempt as he recalls his former high finance colleagues from the 80s.
“They’d come in all aggressive with their stupid clichéd sales pitches; ‘this is the deal for you’,” he shudders, “Whereas my style was always to be more considered.”
Though he remains best known for launching Britain’s first superclub Ministry of Sound and turning it into a reported £100million a year multi-media music and nightlife empire, he’s more recently turned his hand to novel writing, after passing day to day control of the club to CEO Lohan Presencer over five years ago.
Publishing his debut novel Tomas two years ago (a bizarre, surreal satire about ‘bloated bankers, Russian roubles, salacious socialites and filthy footballers’, he’s chatting today to promote follow up Tancredi, a similarly themed satire that this time starts from the concept that ‘humankind has become so riddled with the disease of short-termism that it ignores its fate’. (http://bit.ly/nD8g50 (Tancredi; trailer, Youtube)
That’s he’s talented as a writer is immediately apparent from a cursory glance through Tancredi’s self-penned accompanying autobiography, a gripping, fast paced narrative of privilege, guns and gangsters few other than Jeffrey Archer would have dared to invent, let alone live.)
“I was born with many advantages,” he begins.
“My family was wealthy and I had the best education, going to Eton, then Oxford. And yet despite it all, I never really conformed to the norms of my background. As with so many people, my life can be read as a struggle to find my own identity.” (http://bit.ly/nx98Bg
Exploring his identity initially by campaigning against (and over-turning) Eton’s centuries’ old fagging system (a Tom Brown’s School Days’ style system where young boys were forced to be servants for elders) he next set up an illegal butler service in LA before narrowly escaping being deported when US Immigration tracked him.
Arriving back in the UK, he went to Oxford University, set up a budget airline, sold it to Richard Branson (who renamed it Virgin) before giving in to convention and ending up a merchant banker.
“No one really knew what was involved; it just seemed the best and most glamorous way to make money. I kept up my wheeler-dealing, but to my shame joined the money herd,” James confesses.
“The seven years I spent in the City were the most depressing of my life, but I learned about hard work,” he muses.
“If you want to make money you have to sacrifice a lot, there’s little concept of a work/play balance. I rarely went on holiday, most weekends were spent in the office, everything was subordinated to the prime directive.”
“I shudder looking back: arriving at work for the 6.30 am meeting to hear an American voice on speaker telling us how the dollar would trade that day; talking clichéd nonsense to clients trying to solicit business; looking at the clock at 10.30 pm, wondering if it was too early to go home. What a mindless, soul-destroying life I led.”
Today he spends most mornings, cheerfully, in the gym.
“We’re meeting today at my gym because I’m an big exercise guy, I think if you’re fit you’re better able to do more,” he suggests.
Though he also owns up to being ‘very careful about what I eat’ he’s less rigid about alcohol, admitting he advises his 20 year old son ‘‘just drink vodka’. It’s delicious.”
“I try not to drink too much, though every so often I go a bit mad. I guess, deep down, the reason I’ve never taken drugs must be fear of losing control,” says James.
“A large part of me thinks doing drugs is unnecessary. I know I can drink vodka.”
“For example, I’m nervous about flying so I’ll have two or three vodkas and I’m happy. If I’m at a party and I want to anaesthetise myself because people are too boring then I’ll drink then too. Or perhaps I’ll have a really great cocktail. But I could never put anything in my nose.”
“I think it would fit the story more if I’d done drugs, but I have plenty of vices, Jonty, and I’ve done plenty of stuff. Maybe one day I will, who knows,” he smiles.
