Cocaine users are slipping under the radar in Australia because they have what many drug-takers don't - money, report Reid Sexton and Gary Tippet.
EVERY week, Michael has Friday on his mind. Monday's not so bad, and it's not the five-day drag that nags him. In fact, he loves the job: the 50-hour weeks at a high-profile city brokerage; trading up to $15 million a day; even the knowledge that one bad decision can cost his clients a fortune.
The pressure, the long hours. Loves them. But what he loves more is cocaine. And Friday night is when he scores. A bag of high-grade powder from his dealer to power him through the weekend of pubs and parties. Usually it sets him back $300 a gram and, if it's a big weekend, he might do two grams.
Michael — obviously not his real name — says he does cocaine to relax and for that extra confidence boost. And, when Thursday seems to go so slow, it's that extra incentive to get through work.
"My work environment is very stressful," he says. "So it's good to be able to unwind outside that environment."
He says probably one in every five of his colleagues "jump on it at weekends", but rarely during the week or to enhance their work performance. Although he reckons he once heard someone snorting off the toilet seat in the next cubicle.
Michael, in his late-20s, earns up to $200,000 a year, which he says gives him the freedom to use coke rather than methamphetamines or ecstasy, which are cheaper but take longer to come down from. And expense is not an issue.
"I guess I can afford to do something that gives me a different buzz but allows me to function come Monday morning," he says.
Even after a two-gram weekend, he says, he's up and running at 90 per cent — looking after other people's money. By Friday, he's all set for another weekend in the "snow", and chances are that he and others like him will never be prosecuted for it. They fly under the radar.
Although available statistics suggest cocaine has never been a big part of the Australian illegal drug scene, anecdotal evidence suggests it has been a constant. The problem is that law enforcement figures have a built-in flaw that masks the reality.
The drug has always been expensive in Australia because it has to be smuggled a long way — from South America. Because it is expensive it is used by people who tend to avoid police detection in ways other drug users do not.
Statistics show that only 2 per cent of drug-affected people police arrest are using cocaine (compared with 55 per cent for cannabis) but police concede privately that cocaine users rarely come into contact with law enforcement unless they mix it with other substance abuse.
Paul Dillon of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre says available statistics indicates cocaine use has hardly altered in 15 years, but he points out it is used "by pockets of people who are very hard to access — and we don't know anything about them". It is possible to gauge use of heroin, amphetamines and even cannabis through policing street offences, but this is difficult with cocaine.
Attempts to research "the high end of the market" have failed, he says. David Crosbie, former CEO of Odyssey House drug rehabilitation centre and a member of the Australian National Council on Drugs, agrees. "The profile of people using higher-grade cocaine is unlikely to be in any of the stats," Crosbie says. Whereas other drug users often use a variety of illegal drugs together, "with cocaine users, the chances are they will be having a glass of quality red".
The reference to expensive wine is apt: cocaine is the French champagne of illicit drugs. "It would cost you $200 for a good time with good-quality cocaine — whereas a 'point' of ice or heroin will cost about $40," notes Crosbie.
This explains why cocaine is probably as popular now as it was at the peak of the 1980s economic boom: now, as then, people with plenty of disposable income and high-pressure jobs use it as social lubricant, stimulant and status symbol.
In drugs, as in everything, fashions come and go. But cocaine is no modern phenomenon.
Long before the high-flying 1980s, Melbourne police received disturbing reports that cocaine use was rising. They decided to use an undercover technique — later known as "buy-bust" — to infiltrate the dealers, and had immediate success, making arrests in Smith Street, Collingwood, and Russell Street in the city.
Everything about that sounds familiar — except the date. It was January 30, 1919. Two constables, wearing borrowed army uniforms, walked into suspect chemists and asked to buy "snow". They were sold 4.5 grams and 3.5 grams respectively.
The arrests were the first in Australia for cocaine abuse and now, nearly 90 years later, police admit they are no closer to stamping it out.
The fact is, Australians have always had a voracious appetite for drugs. In 1936, a Commonwealth statistical report found Australia had the highest cocaine consumption in the English-speaking world.
It's not a popular subject on Anzac Day, but many diggers returning from the horrors of World War I brought back not just venereal diseases and mental illness but drug habits — foreshadowing what would happen during and after the Vietnam War.
The cocaine habit spread to prostitutes in Melbourne and Sydney. Nearly 50 years later, US soldiers on leave from Vietnam introduced heroin into Australia in much the same way.
In 1919, police arrested a former soldier who had burgled five homes in Melbourne to feed his drug habit. It was the first reported case of an Australian committing crime to buy drugs.
In the 1920s, the drug was confined to the slums and the vice world, far from the status it would later attain as a drug for the jet set. Along the way, it became a drug of choice for underworld gunmen.
A crime reporter in the 1950s and 1960s, the late Tom Prior, would not approach the notorious gunman Fred "The Frog" Harrison in the evening, as he knew he would be "wired" on cocaine and dangerously unpredictable. Harrison, who was shot dead on the docks in 1958, was not the only "old-style" criminal to indulge in cocaine. A bank robber of that era told a reporter that cocaine had its own catchphrase among criminals of the time: "grouse snow, 10 bob a go."
The price has changed — and the clientele has, too. A former heavy user in Melbourne's legal fraternity says "the price is up and the weight is down" from about $250 a gram in the late 1990s to about $350 for .8 of a gram. This does not deter well-heeled white collar workers like Michael the merchant banker, for whom it is part of a frenetic lifestyle.
Because cocaine has never been cheap in Australia it has developed a self-perpetuating cachet as the champagne of "recreational" drugs. Says a member of a former top Australian rock band: "The feeling was that bogans smoke dope and do speed but coke goes with a certain lifestyle — it matches their bag and shoes."
On tour in the 1980s, he noticed that American music industry people used cocaine more freely than their Australian contemporaries, reflecting the fact it was relatively cheap and easy to get in the United States. Now, Australian "celebrity" users are following the American and European model.
It is not surprising that Australian music industry people cultivated underworld figures who supplied high-quality drugs to pander to the tastes of international touring acts. The late Dennis Bruce Allan, a prolific murderer known as "Mr Death", rubbed shoulders with rock stars because he supplied the best drugs.
When police caught a safecracker who had raided the office of a Melbourne-based record company in the 1990s, the thief listed the exact contents of a briefcase he had taken from a safe there. It matched the list supplied by the owner except for one thing: a large bag of cocaine that the record company people had failed to mention.
While not all cocaine users are celebrities or wealthy professionals, enough celebrities and professionals use the drug that some senior police have been reluctant to push investigations for fear of upsetting people with influence.
A former drug squad detective recalls: "I can remember not being able to get a search warrant for the (name deleted) nightclub because it involved celebrities, people with money and influence. And it was hard to convince your boss to raid a Toorak birthday party. If you are in the cocaine set you are not getting shut down by the cops every 10 minutes, unlike other drug users on the street."
In the 1980s, the National Crime Authority, as part of an investigation into the Sydney underworld, uncovered a cocaine-smuggling syndicate.
They found that Peter James Cross, son of a former NSW judge, was smuggling cocaine from South America on behalf of successful businesspeople who should have known better. Cross became a witness for the NCA and identified real estate agents, a veterinarian and a high-profile Melbourne businessman as being involved in the cocaine racket.
A lawyer representing one of the suspects offered a list of celebrities using cocaine in Melbourne if his client was indemnified from prosecution. Oddly enough, the offer was refused. No one could be sure whose name might be on the list.
When the party's over: how cocaine can damage you
Long-term effects of cocaine:
■ Agitation and panic
■ Unpredictable, aggressive behaviour
■ Headache
■ Increased blood pressure and heart rate (after initial slowing)
■ Hypertension and irregular heart beat
■ Reduced appetite
■ Indifference to pain and localised pain relief.
■ Insomnia
■ Depression
■ Hallucinations
■ Anxiety, paranoia and psychosis
■ Eating disorders and weight loss
■ Sexual dysfunction
■ Sensitivity to light and sound
■ Cerebral atrophy (wasting of the brain) and impaired thinking
Long-term effects related to method of use:
■ Repeated snorting damages the lining of the nose and nasal passages, and can also damage the structure separating the nostrils.
■ Smoking crack cocaine can cause breathing difficulties, chronic cough, bronchitis and other respiratory problems.
■ Cocaine is "cut" with substances that are poisonous when injected. This can cause collapsed veins, abscesses and damage to the heart, liver and brain.
■ If injected into the skin, cocaine can cause severe vasoconstriction, which may prevent blood flowing to the tissue, potentially resulting in severe tissue damage.
SOURCE: AUSTRALIAN DRUG FOUNDATION