Organised crime expert Misha Glenny has predicted that cocaine will become obsolete in the future, arguing that cheaper to manufacture synthetic substitutes with superior effects will soon replace the natural narcotic. “Production is slowly shifting from developing countries like Afghanistan and Colombia and moving into centers like Holland and Canada,” the author of ‘McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld’ told New American Media. “The Balkans is a big operation where a lot of chemists make ecstasy, for example.”

His projection comes not long after Colombian vice-president, Francisco Santo issued a thinly veiled call for cocaine to be legalised at a London drug conference aimed to reduce coke consumption in the UK, attended by appropriately named Labour Minister Vernon Coaker. “In the case of Colombia and this country the discussion of legalisation is something that does not have the political will or the possibility of becoming a reality in the near future, so in Colombia, whereas a lot of illegal groups fund [themselves] through this kind of operation we have no other option in terms of combating it,” he complained. “The debate is open but we wish it had a louder sense in terms of how we can reduce consumption and production,” he added.

The debate happened as government data revealed that cocaine related hospital admissions increased by four hundred percent in the last 8 years in the UK, with ‘740 cocaine-induced health emergencies in 2006/07, compared with 161 in 1998/99’ (Metro).