Snack on free-range eggs and ethically-sourced meats by day, hoover up blow and support murderous drug regimes around the world by night.

Ah yes, the plight of the Millennial cocaine user.

A few months ago we showed you how dealers in London are giving out loyalty cards now, and this time around it’s the ethics of using the drug that are coming under scrutiny.

Over on the Telegraph, they’re showing the somewhat antithetical relationship between Millennial values and cocaine use.

Let’s get stuck in:

Millennials are an ethical bunch. Veganism is on the rise, primarily down to the environmental impact of meat production and animal welfare issues. At universities, statues of historic British figures are squabbled over due to their racism or imperialism. Abortion; assisted suicide; racial profiling by the police; clothes manufacturing; bamboo coffee cups. The list goes on…

While twenty-somethings fight the cause during the week, ethics fly out the door on the weekend. I’m talking about cocaine. Once a preserve of the rich, the resurgent white powder has yet again become the party drug du jour.

Isn’t cocaine use ethical? Who would have thought? The numbers drive home this point:

In 2005, over 23,000 people were killed as a direct result of the cocaine trade, in Colombia alone; the country supplied 80pc of Britain’s coke. The Netflix show Narcos, about Pablo Escobar, claims that six people died per kilo of cocaine in the early 1990s and, while the real number is hard to ascertain, the devastation is obvious. In the years since, things aren’t looking any rosier…

Has knowledge of the death and destruction helped quell the cocaine trade? Are millennials worried about the deforestation that goes with cocaine production, pushing animals to exctinction? Or the excess product that pollutes local water supplies?

In a word – nah. Cocaine production is actually being ramped up in South America, due to ‘the West’s insatiable appetite’.

You can’t blame that solely on Millennials, because we all know a creepy 50-year-old coke fiend who trawls Bree Street with a baggie looking for friends, but on the whole it does point to an ethical dilemma of sorts.

When they quizzed cocaine users, some of the responses were rather interesting:

“It’s in the back of my mind, but I also don’t think about how my clothes are made, how meat is produced, or how much the avocados and quinoa I eat affect people who are exploited for it to end up on supermarket shelves,” says Jack.

Alice agrees: “There are ethical factors around everything we consume. The best we can do is to engage, understand responsibility, and reduce our unethical consumption as much as we can. Some people choose not to do coke but drive a 4×4. I choose to occasionally take coke and not eat meat or fish.”

Yeah, 4×4 drivers, can’t go doubling down on the marching powder as well.

Almond milk in the coffee at work, a vegan nibble for lunch, and on the nose candy by closing time.

Happy Friday.

[source:telegraph]