Drug dealers go GREEN! Cocaine peddlers jump on eco-bandwagon by ditching plastic ‘baggies’ for reusable pods to cater for ‘hipster’ clients
- Birmingham dealer explained that his container was ‘better for the environment’
- He explained to buyer that he had ‘a load of hipster customer and they loved it’
- Drug linked by UN to huge deforestation, but others blame livestock and roads
- Number of cocaine users in England and Wales is at its highest in a decade
The buyer was given cocaine in a plastic vial similar to these (file photo)
A cocaine user was baffled when his dealer sold him the drug in an eco-friendly reusable container favoured by his ‘hipster’ customers.
The Class A substance came in a plastic pod as the Birmingham seller told his buyer that hipsters loved the idea.
With single-use plastic bags firmly out of fashion, it might not be that surprising that even drug dealers ditch the tiny wallets in which measures are often sold.
But the customer remained sceptical about the environmental impact of providing reusable containers to hold a substance the United Nations has linked to massive deforestation in Colombia.
‘I was given a gram of cocaine in this plastic pod thing and my dealer said they were not serving up in plastic Ziploc bags or wraps any more,’ he told Metro.
‘He said that I could bring it back if I wanted to and he would refill it and that it would be better for the environment.
‘I told him I was not bothered about the environment and surely cocaine itself can’t be that be eco-friendly, but he reckoned he had a load of hipster customers and they loved it.’
The University of New York revealed the devastating impact cocaine cultivation has on South America in a 2011 study.
But their findings were disputed in 2016 by the state’s Stony Brook University, which called the impact of the cocaine trade ‘negligible’ and blamed livestock grazing as well as road-building projects.
The dealer told his buyer that he had loads of hipster customers and they loved the idea of buying cocaine in a reusable container
Cocaine use in England and Wales is currently the highest it’s been in a decade, with 875,000 users from 2017/18 according to a crime survey.
The West Midlands dealer’s switch from single-use ‘baggies’ mirrors the trend across the nation after David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II raised awareness on the impact plastic has on the world’s oceans.
The upsurge has seen plastic straws scrapped for cardboard in bars across the country.
It comes four years after the government imposed a charge of 5p on single-use plastic bags at supermarkets.