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Britain might just have the most “cokey” greywater in all of Europe. Londoners smaak coke so much that five years ago, it started leaking into the River Thames, while a good decade back, they were already finding traces of it in the city’s sewage.

The white stuff is still everywhere, long associated with the City’s long hours and finance bros, despite its myriad ethical and financial issues; complete with grisly deaths and the fact that you have to fork out roughly £100, which is equal to R2,414, to get high.

It’s so prevalent that it’s no longer a special weekend night thing but an after-work on Thursday thing. In other words, one in 40 British adults take coke, more than anywhere else in Europe and the second highest rate of use of any country in the world.

But this ubiquity, The Guardian argues, is precisely what is cutting into the drug’s appeal.

“With cocaine it seems, we’re growing, if not sick of the stuff, at least phenomenally bored with the routine of it. Figures released last year show that student drug use has halved since the 90s, with just 5.1% of 16- to 24-year-olds identifying as coke users.”

Gen Z’s are definitely the okes behind turning coke cringe, consistently reported as being more sensible than their millennial predecessors.

 They drink less, gamble less; they experience fewer teen pregnancies. They don’t eat meat (43% are vegetarians). They have a healthier relationship to work. As digital natives, they supposedly know the value in not posting their wild nights out (which they’re less prone to in the first place) all over social media.

Overall, it’s safe to say they embrace a refreshingly healthier attitude toward consumption and well-being than the generations that came before them – including, very much, sniffing a few lines.

Drug trends have always evolved along generational lines, clinging to their hedonistic countercultural allure precisely because they weren’t embraced by the generation that came before. The hippy boomers thrust marijuana into the spotlight, while their children—the money-hungry yuppies of the ’80s—turned to coke, finding it the perfect fuel to work hard and party harder. Then the ’90s flipped the script once more with a second summer of love, but this time, the vibe was all about pingers instead of weed.

For every generation, a drug hits its pop-culture zenith before being cast aside. Cocaine appears to be on the brink of reaching that pinnacle as well—only to be overshadowed by the rising tide of hallucinogenics, mushrooms, and the trend of micro-dosing.

ONS data for England and Wales released in December reported that 260,000 people aged between 16 and 59 had taken magic mushrooms in the previous year, 100,000 more than in 2020.

Now it’s not so much about the “stay-up, drink-more, work-more, consume-more, pre-2008-crash mentality”  because partying hard in a world that is slowly getting hotter and more expensive is insane if not outright impossible.

Given their reputation for being a more sober generation (both ethically and substance-wise) this makes sense – as coke has become more and more widespread in Europe, it’s harder for younger users to ignore the human cost of the trade and its trafficking.

Plus, Gen Zers, hyper-attuned to the concept of “millennial cringe”, just want to put some distance between their parents and the drugs they did and themselves.

[source:guardian]