Let's take this with a pinch of salt, but via Izabella Kaminska of FTAlphaville comes a very interesting theory on why the UK's civil society has collapsed.
The theory -- new techniques by British police have led to a drug drought in the country. Now angry drug barons are using their power in deprived communities to hit back at the police.
This post by Chris Cook over at the Euro Tribune outlines the general idea.
Cook points towards an article in the Scotsman that indicates British authorities have a new strategy (which Cook calls "disruption") that allowed them to seriously clampdown on big-time drug dealers. Just last week the UK found a record hall of cocaine near Southhampton, further advancing his theory.
The tactic was apparently so successful that The Guardian began to wonder if a heroin shortage could "put lives at risk". Bloggers who focused on the drug underworld began to talk about a serious "dry season" in the heroin trade, and the International Drug Policy Consortium issued a paper on the subject.
If Britain's drug trade breaks down, two things happen.
- Drug addicts have no drugs.
- Drug dealers have no money.
That's a considerable amount of pissed off people -- either forced to commit more crime to get money for increasingly expensive drugs, or forced to leave the relatively simple illegal practice of drug dealing to move into new, and potentially more violent fields.
Cook believes that the drug barons, with their lackeys and clients at their disposal, could have played a large role in starting the riots.
He notes that the man at the center of the controversy, Mark Duggan, may well have been a big time drug dealer. The riots in Tottenham, while probably started as a justifiable protest by Mark's legitimate friends and family, may have been spurred on by members of the local criminality who wanted to teach the police a lesson for messing with their business.
Of course, this is all a theory, and we'd hate to downplay the legitimate concerns members of these communties have but we agree with Kaminska that this deserves attention.
cybershamans (karmapolice) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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