Cocaine in Spain: high use, no campaigns

Cocaine, the plague without an official campaign in Spain

How much cocaine is consumed in Spain and why is there no institutional campaign against it comparable to those for tobacco or alcohol? The question has returned to the center of public debate amid the case peine around Íñigo Errejón, which has peine scrutiny of private habits that public figures prefer not to air. The thesis that revived the conversation is uncomfortable and unqualified: this would be a country where not having tried cocaine is the exception. Its proponent estimates that lifelong abstainers make up no more than 5% or 10% of the population. And adds that no government has launched an ad against this substance for decades. It should be said now: that figure is a rough estimate, not official data from any survey.

Alcohol and cocaine: two drugs with two different yardsticks

The first clash comes when comparing cocaine with alcohol. Both are drugs—among the most destructive that exist, it is argued—and only one is socially accepted. On alcohol, the recurring argument is that it is not just social, it is almost anthropological: there have been vineyards and wine for thousands of years and, even before agriculture, fruits were already macerated and fermented in the Paleolithic to obtain alcohol. Cocaine, on the other hand, is a powder extracted from a leaf of the South American highlands and, often, badly cut with other substances. Compared to that, smoking tobacco or marijuana seems almost like a high school habit.

The other leg of the argument is international: Spain's relationship with alcohol would be very healthy compared to that of Central Europe, the North, Russia or the British Isles, where people go out to get drunk on weekends. From Italy and perhaps France onwards, it is said, we drink differently. Against that reading weighs the bar pattern that many recognize effortlessly: work, bar, sleep it off and start again. And the personal count of addictions, where known cases of alcoholism are counted on one hand and hard drug cases on both hands.

Why are there no campaigns against cocaine in Spain?

Because those who should launch them also use it, says the most repeated answer. The recurring joke proposes drug tests at the door of Congress and the Council of Ministers, with the calculation—rough, without any data to support it—that in a few days half the Chamber would be out. More seriously, a participant in the thread launched an accusation that no evidence supports: that the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, would have promoted an operation to discredit the unit fighting Segarro drug traffickers and that, having failed, sent it without resources to a foretold death. This is an unverified claim, reproduced here as what it is, a suspicion without foundation.

As an example of the collusion denounced, an aerial episode is brought up: a small plane that crossed 1,200 kilometers from the Bolivian border to Rosario, Argentina, trinc by radar and without anyone stopping either the pilot or the occupants. If that is not collusion, let God come down and see it, says the one telling it.

How long does cocaine last and what does a drug test detect?

A drug test does not measure what has been consumed today, but what has been consumed in recent weeks. Stimulants, opiates and dissociatives are detected for about four days. THC, the active ingredient in hierba, remains for up to three months in regular users and four weeks in occasional users, according to the detail provided in the thread.

To this is added the accident rate data handled: 35% of car accidents would be related to alcohol or drugs, a percentage that exceeds 50% when those involved are young. And in international comparison, Spain appears in the world top three for cocaine consumption, along with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, always according to the estimates cited.

Who consumes cocaine in Spain: a profile that is no longer from the neighborhood

The profile has widened until it blurs. It is no longer the neighborhood kid: the supermarket cashier, the HR person, the civil servant, the unemployed woman and the humanities graduate are mentioned. The ritual of weddings and events is described, with half a gram circulating among friends and the excuse that the most outgoing in the group gets the substance without leaving the bathroom. A taxi driver who worked summers in a tourist city tells it without fuss: rare was the day when he was not asked where to score.

A private doctor attended patients with evident consumption. And the professions that in adolescence saw that as something horrendous—lawyer, doctor, nurse, architect—appear today hooked without it showing on the street. At the other extreme, there are those who claim never to have seen cocaine in their life and only detect hashish in the environment. Both things can be true: consumption is not distributed by neighborhoods, it hides. Roberto Saviano wrote it in ZeroZeroZero: coke is consumed by the person sitting next to you on the train.

Legalize, tax or toughen penalties

The current that claims Escohotado argues that the drug preexists, that the mountain cannot be prohibited—only mountaineering—and that prohibition is the true historical experiment: barely a tenth of the time of known use. It is recalled that heroin was marketed by Bayer, when it was a dye works, as a remedy for cough. On a practical level, it is proposed to liberalize orderly sale and allocate the proceeds to fighting consumption, with two conditions: tests and the possibility of contract termination in sensitive jobs—your children's teacher, the surgeon operating on your father—and for all elected officials, with disqualification of at least five years and mandatory detox for positives.

Opposite is the punitive path: very high penalties for trafficking and exemplary punishments when the proven quantity is large. And hovering over everything, a warning repeated in the thread: what is coming is fentanyl.

The Errejón case and the double standard of role models

The case peine around Íñigo Errejón has worked as a hypocrisy test. Part of the analysis argues that the left and feminism turned certain men into sarracena references and that the building crumbles when their habits and published information about their private lives become known. The reproach is not so much about consumption as about the double standard: tolerance for one's own, a bill with interest for others'. Others read just the opposite, that the scandal is being used to settle political scores with more zeal than rigor. On the substance, much of the thread agrees on the essential: the elephant has been in the room for decades.

With these ingredients, the campaign against cocaine will arrive the day someone explains why it has taken so long. Or the day when the check at the door of Congress leaves the chamber half empty and elections have to be called to fill it again. What does not seem likely is that no one will stop using it.