Here’s How Coronavirus Has Impacted Aussie Drug Habits & How Dealers Are Making It Work

cocaine coronavirus

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to completely change our way of life, drug dealers are finding some pretty interesting trends in the market.

Completely unsurprisingly, party drugs have become less popular, likely due to the fact that every single bar and nightclub across the country has been closed for weeks. According to a recent interview with VICE, users in Melbourne have been opting for weed or Xanax instead of the usual “upper” drugs like cocaine and MDMA.

“The customers in Melbourne have gone down though. Selling way more Xanax and weed. People have been getting into the downers,” an (understandably) anonymous dealer told Vice.

A recent report from The Economist echoed a similar story over in the UK, where “coke is out, weed is in.”

Basically, people across the globe seem to be turning to weed as a way to calm down and distract themselves from the absolute shit show that is the current global health pandemic.

“It locks me down—physically and mentally,” a weed user told The Economist. “It helps me filter out all this drama.”

But in addition to a decrease in sales, dealers have also seen a decline in quality due to difficulties importing cocaine. It’s never easy to import cocaine (or any drug) into Australia, but with closed borders, it’s harder than ever to get cocaine from Columbia or Peru to Sydney without being detected.

Difficulties in importing pure cocaine has resulted in dealers cutting their product with other substances.

“The supply is getting weak,” a dealer told VICE. “For the first few weeks, it was good. We were only losing about 30 percent so it was really strong stuff. But we’re losing more than 40 percent now.”

Obviously, there’s been an increase in downer drugs like Xanax and weed, presumably because we’re all stuck at home and wouldn’t mind to chill out a little bit. But it turns out there’s still a decent chunk of people buying coke on weekends, which would make for some interesting Zoom kick-ons.

No, cocaine won’t cure your case of the COVID-19 coronavirus, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t using it to spice up their Friday night knock off Zoom drinks.

The coronavirus hasn’t completely killed the market for drugs, which means dealers have had to get creative in order to deliver while maintaining a safe social distance. They might be breaking drug-related laws, but at least they’re being responsible about it.

“If it’s night time, we’ve been meeting in car parks. I’ll tell them to go into the shops and text me their license plate and I just leave it in their glovebox. Usually just do the same thing at local parks and shit like where people will be exercising. It’s pretty chill but I’ve been keeping my distance,” another dealer explained to VICE.

So there you have it, coronavirus has us all smoking more weed and doing less party drugs. But if you thought nobody was doing coke in their own bathrooms at kick-ons, you’d be sorely mistaken.

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