There’s nothing quite like buying that fifth frozen ice-cream / coffee / health wrap and scoring a freebie, because everything tastes better when you didn’t pay for it.

I guess the same rings true for nose candy, and that’s why some dealers over in the UK are dishing out loyalty cards to their most habitual sniffers.

As dealers battle it out in a series of turf wars vying for market dominance, drug campaigners say this is just one example of how middle-class cocaine users are fuelling violence right across the country.

The Telegraph obtained one of these loyalty cards, so let’s plonk that here:

Some musings on the design:

[It] appears to have been carefully designed to mimic the imagery associated with the dance and rave music cultures of the 1980’s and 1990’s, suggesting they are targeting those in their 30’s, 40’s and even older.

And its developers – almost inevitably an organised criminal gang – have adopted well honed marketing techniques intended to promote brand loyalty and increase use by ‘customers’.

The ‘scheme’ offers stamps for bulk purchases giving the sixth and then twelfth wrap of cocaine free, said the source who handed it to The Telegraph and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Here’s the front of the freebie card:

Not exactly that low key, is it?

Considering that blow is estimated to cost between £50 and £80 a wrap (R845 to R1 350), you’ve sure earned that freebie.

Tony Saggers, the former head of drugs threat at the National Crime Agency, is very unimpressed with these middle-class cocaine users:

“They will find sweatshop abhorrent, slave labour a brutal, terrifying thing to be happening in their neighbourhood,” he said, adding: “Each time those people snort that line of cocaine, they have just funded far worse.”

[source:telegraph]