Police grew suspicious of the shipment when they found that the Ecuadorian exporter had a history of illegal trafficking. Concern grew when, upon arrival to Algeciras on Oct. 14, discrepancies were detected between the declared and actual cargo. This led cops to open the container and uncover a shocking amount of cocaine.

The container was full of boxes containing bananas, as expected. Behind the fruit-carrying boxes, though, were identical boxes housing the drugs. Bricks of cocaine, which were the exact size of the boxes they were in, were discovered in the back boxes.

In the shipment, police found 13 tons of cocaine, which is more than 25,000 pounds. Before this bust, the largest drug find in Spain came in 2023, when police seized 9.3 tons of cocaine.

After the bust, police raided five locations in Madrid and Alicante. During these raids, police seized loads of documents that will soon be analyzed by investigators.

One woman, who is a partner of the company receiving the illicit shipment, was arrested in Toledo. Two managers of the importing company are on the run.

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Police say the incident – thought to be linked to drug trafficking – began as a drive-by attack and descended into a major fight between rival groups. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said there were between 400 to 600 people at the scene, but it’s unclear how many exactly were involved in the brawl.

Drug-related violence in on the rise in France, said Retailleau. Last week, a five-year-old was shot in the head while sitting in a car with his father, during a shooting police have confirmed was drug-related.

“These shootings are not happening in South America, they are happening in Rennes, in Poitiers, in this part of western France once known for its tranquility,” Retailleau said. 

“We are at a tipping point, and the choice we have today is a choice between general mobilization or the Mexicanisation of the country,” he added, referring to Mexico’s struggle with rampant cartel-related violence. 

Poitiers Mayor Léonore Moncond’huy posted on X about the gravity of the situation, calling for more action against drug violence. 

“The youth of those involved is particularly worrying,” she wrote. “I call for everyone’s responsibility to maintain calm in the city, and welcome the increased presence of security forces.”

While the drug trade has historically been centred in the southern city of Marseille – where 49 people were killed in drug-related violence last year – it is now spreading to more rural areas and smaller cities and towns.

According to the Global Organized Crime Index, “France hosts one of the largest [drug] markets in Europe, and the synthetic-drug trade is on the rise in the country, especially in festival environments, with the darknet and social media serving as major selling platforms.”

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According to a warning by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Ziyinzhuangyang tablets—which many people apparently use to treat their bedroom problems—contain the undeclared substance sildenafil. Since sildenafil is a prescription-only medicine, Ziyinzhuangyang tablets are illegal.

“Sildenafil can interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, potentially lowering blood pressure to dangerous levels,” the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) wrote. “People with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease are often prescribed nitrates. Sildenafil, whether taken alone or in combination with other medication, can cause serious side effects.”

The Ziyinzhuangyang tablets they tested were purchased online rather than at a pharmacy.

“Ziyinzhuangyang tablets pose a serious risk to your health and should not be taken,” the administration stressed.

Years ago, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) made this same warning, noting that sildenafil—the active ingredient in Viagra—can only be administered via a prescription. In other words, your doctor will have to work with your unique health history and consider other medications you’re taking before giving you the pill. 

While this was common knowledge in the U.S. back in 2016, shipments have apparently continued to be made overseas. 

“We advise consumers to exercise extreme caution when purchasing medicines from unknown overseas websites,” the TGA stated. “For your safety, always buy medicines from reputable sources and consult your healthcare provider or local registered pharmacy if you have any concerns.”

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The THC-laced pizzas were sold to customers between October 22 and October 24. At least five people who ordered those pizzas required medical attention for being way too high. Keep in mind that stuffing THC into fatty foods like pizza can intensify its effects. This is because fats enhance the absorption of cannabinoids. That’s one of the reasons why pot brownies are such a perfect vehicle for THC absorption. It’s a delicious fatty treat that not only helps mask some of the icky flavors of marijuana behind several layers of sugar and chocolate, but all that buttery oily goodness helps intensify your high.

Local health officials were still receiving reports from people affected by the extremely potent pizzas days after eating the pies. All of this is made even funnier by the fact that marijuana is illegal in Wisconsin. But Delta-9, a form of THC, is not. It’s a weird legal gray area. Delta-9 is essentially THC and can get you high like THC but isn’t considered illegal while marijuana is. Such is life in a nation that refuses to flatly legalize marijuana to create some sense of uniformity in our laws and understanding of the plant and its many derivatives.

The pizza joint’s co-owner, Cale Ryan, told the Wisconsin State Journal that after grabbing the wrong oil from a shared kitchen space within the building housing the restaurant, the cook went on to make a batch of dough that consisted of around 60 pizzas, all of which were contaminated. So far, he’s only heard from 20 customers who were affected. Famous Yeti’s Pizza has been temporarily closed to deep clean every square inch of the place.

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The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) stormed a North Houston duplex that was housing the meth conversion lab operation on Tuesday. Inside, law enforcement discovered 80 gallons of liquid meth and another 31 kilograms of meth. This would equate to about 400 pounds worth of drugs, which could net about $2 million according to the DEA. 

The aftermath also saw two people associated with a Mexican drug cartel arrested for their connection to the operation. The two men, both in their 30s, are charged with intention to deliver over 400 grams of meth. 

The DEA has been making major strides in shutting down meth labs this year. Special Agent in Charge Daniel Comeux said this was the 25th lab they’ve unearthed in Houston alone. Earlier this year, a local drug dealer was sent to jail after possessing 5,000 grams of the drug. There was even a high school teacher in the area that was busted for trafficking meth. 

“Those labs are like ticking bombs, they can explode any second, any minute and kill innocent people,” Comeaux said according to Houston Public Media. 

Texas, and Houston in particular, is a major hub for the smuggling of methamphetamines due to its proximity to the border. A report by Newsweek earlier this year also listed Texas behind California for the most meth users in the country. 

“Meth is eating everybody’s lunch and nobody’s talking about it. Meth is crawling up on everybody,” Peter Stout, the president and chief executive officer of the Houston Forensic Science Center, told the Texas Tribune in 2023. “Meth fatalities are way up even if you look at the Texas numbers.”

Texas lawmakers are reportedly working on legislation to combat the rise. Currently, possession of less than 1 gram in the state is punishable up to two years. On the other end of the spectrum, 400 grams or higher is a minimum 20 years with the potential for life in prison. 

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The joint operation started in June. Over several months, they studied shipment invoices and questionable patterns regarding imports. The shipments were predominately from China. Eventually, the appropriate ships were investigated and raided, which resulted in the enormous haul of illegal vapes pulled off the cargoes before ever hitting the streets.

Only 23 e-cigarette products are currently legal and authorized for sale in the U.S., all of which are tobacco-flavored. But officials report there are more than 11,500 different devices available, even despite the various seizures of illegal vapes that have occurred over the past few years. The problem is, that unauthorized disposable vapes aren’t subject to regulated U.S. commercial manufacturing practices, potentially exposing consumers to unknown health risks—like liters of vape juice flooding the lungs. 

FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf said the organization remains on “high alert.” 

“These products too often end up in kids’ hands, and the newly formed federal task force is well positioned to collectively combat this unscrupulous activity,” he said in a statement. 

Brian King, the director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, had an incredible parting shot in the release towards the assailants: “The $76 million these bad actors just put in the dumpster should be a sobering reminder that their time and money would be better spent complying with the law.”

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The rapper—who operates his own cannabis brand called Khalifa Kush—even posted on X about the incident, acknowledging his mistake and highlighting the authorities’ respectfulness.

“​​Last nights show was amazing,” he wrote. “I didn’t mean any disrespect to the country of Romania by lighting up on stage. They were very respectful and let me go. I’ll be back soon. But without a big ass joint next time.”

However, that criminal investigation has just been completed, and Wiz Khalifa was officially indicted on drug charges in Romania. According to a press release published by the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DICOT), the star had 18.53 grams of cannabis on him.

“Investigations revealed that during a performance at a music festival in the Costinești resort, Constanța County, he possessed more than 18 grams of cannabis (a risk drug) and consumed another quantity of cannabis on stage in the form of a hand-rolled cigarette,” DICOT stated.

Romania has some pretty strict laws against drugs, including cannabis. Marijuana is illegal there both for recreational and medical use. Needless to say, Wiz Khalifa’s possession of cannabis was a major offense in the country. 

When it comes to high-risk drugs—which Romania law considers cannabis to be—individuals could potentially face up to three years in prison, according to the European Union Drugs Agency.

Despite the charges, it’s unclear whether Wiz Khalifa will actually face trial or imprisonment, given the complexities of international extradition and the nature of the offense.

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Pink cocaine, also known as tusi, has been making headlines recently—especially since the drug was found in Liam Payne’s system after his devastating death. While the synthetic club drug is pink, it isn’t actually cocaine. Instead, it’s a mix of substances like MDMA, ketamine, and caffeine.

According to a complaint filed earlier this year by producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, Combs’ employees were mandated to carry pink cocaine—as well as regular cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and GHB (a date rape drug) with them at all times.

“It was important to defendant [ex-chief of staff Kristina] Khorram to have Mr. Combs’ drug of choice immediately ready when he asks for it,” Jones claimed in the lawsuit. Allegedly, Combs would take these drugs himself and distribute them to his high-profile guests.

The complaint also claimed that Khorram would tell her assistants to “keep Mr. Combs ‘high’ off gummies and pills throughout the 13 months that Jones worked with them.”

She wasn’t the only one allegedly involved in supplying him with drugs, of course. In fact, Combs’s ex-girlfriend, Yung Miami, was accused of transporting pink cocaine for him back in April of 2023. According to Jones’s lawsuit, she took the illicit drug on a private jet from Miami to the Water Music Festival in Virginia because Combs’s usual drug mule forgot it.

Pink cocaine is a relatively new drug, and researchers don’t fully understand all of its long-term effects—partly because individual pill compositions vary a lot. Because the drug includes both stimulants and depressants, users typically experience a variety of sensations, from a racing heart to a euphoric mood.

Of course, this drug can also be extremely dangerous and even deadly, especially if abused or mixed with other substances. Some people might experience low body temperature and seizures, among other effects. 

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During a press conference, criminal director Michael Graf von Moltke revealed that the drug ring in question delivered a side order of cocaine when customers asked for item number 40, multiple outlets report.

“That was one of the best-selling pizzas,” Moltke told reporters.

Suspicious food inspectors tipped police off earlier this year. Upon observation, officers discovered that a side of cocaine was the reason order number 40 was flying off the shelves.

When police arrived at the 36-year-old pizzeria manager’s apartment, he allegedly threw drugs out of the window. That illicit bag “fell right into the arms of the police officers,” cops said.

Once they got into the unit, cops found more than three pounds of cocaine, 14 ounces of weed, and nearly $290,000 of cash, Moltke said.

After the manager’s arrest, Moltke alleged that the man went back to his drug-peddling ways. Police jumped at the chance for further observation, eventually resulting in a drug ring bust, he said. In a press release, cops said they searched 16 properties, made three arrests, and dug up two weed plantations with 360 total plants.

At the press conference, Moltke said that among those arrested was the 22-year-old leader of the drug operation. Homes and businesses of 12 other suspects were raided, he said.

The pizzeria manager was initially released from custody, but was arrested again when he tried to flee again, Moltke said.

The case is being investigated on suspicion of commercial drug trafficking and suspicion of kidnapping for ransom, per the press release.

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So, what do the details tell us about our green and pleasant lands, beyond the fact we really like getting dangerously smashed? VICE spoke with a trio of drug industry experts to find out.

Cocaine: The Deadly People’s Powder

Beak. Bugle. Gak. Gear. Whatever you call it, Britain loves it, and the rise of cocaine-related deaths was the most eye-catching take-home from this year’s stats, with an increase of 30.5 percent in just one year (from 857 in 2022 to 1,118 in 2023). This is a continuation of an upward trend: in 2011, there were just 112 coke-related fatalities.

You only need to watch the advert for Danny Dyer’s new film Marching Powder—in which he plays an aging football hooligan desperately struggling to give up coke (as well as masturbation and FIFA)—to observe Britain’s toxically co-dependent relationship with the stuff. It’s also worth noting that while, overall, the biggest demographic for drug misuse deaths is men from Generation X, cocaine’s biggest victim cohort is actually millennials.

Importantly, Harry Sumnall, Professor of Substance Use at Liverpool John Moores University, points out that these stats don’t differentiate between crack and cocaine. “But significant proportions of those deaths will be associated with cocaine powder and directly related to that,” he says.

The Sisyphean nature of cocaine and its hand-in-glove coziness with other substances, especially booze, is surely part of the appeal for a British culture that created ‘the sesh.’

Cocaine’s harms have also increased in tandem with its quality. In 20019, the average street purity was just 20 percent, while a 2018 report pegged it at 63 percent—nowadays, many street or online dealers offer a range of strengths, scaling up to near 100 percent proof. “It’s higher quality from a consumer perspective,” says Sumnall. “But you’re being exposed to a higher strength over a longer period of time, and that will have a more toxic effect.”

Drugs of Despair, Deprivation of Services

Traditionally, opiates have contributed around half of the overall drug deaths total. This has persisted, with them taking 2,551 lives in 2023—12.8 percent more than last year.

For the first time, we’ve also seen a really significant presence of nitazenes: the synthetic opioid said to be hundreds of times stronger than fentanyl, which has been linked to at least 248 deaths since June 2023, according to the National Crime Agency.

Opiates and opioids are often, perhaps insensitively, denoted as “drugs of despair.” So it’s maybe not surprising that the North East—where deindustrialisation has taken its scythe to employment and opportunity—has had the highest rate of opiate and opioid deaths every year for the last 11. This year, the rate is three times higher than in London.

“Drug-related deaths are socioeconomically patterned,” says Sumnall, adding that “the public health challenge is a general challenge about making cities, towns, and communities healthier.” Austerity-based policies have decimated drugs services and while he praises Professor Dame Carol Black’s 2021 drugs review, which allocated an extra £552m to this area of provision, Sumnall suggests that “there’s been arguments made that, even though that funding is welcomed, it’s not sufficient because it pretty much just takes us back to where we should have been, had there not been any cuts to funding and increased patterns of harm.”

Ketamine: the Drug of Disconnection for a Disconnected Era

Despite being stashed in the underwear of every raver from Block9 to Berghain, for some reason, ketamine isn’t traditionally included in the annual stats around drug deaths. Nevertheless, there has been a fivefold increase in ket-using adults reporting to treatment services. Usage has been spiking, with 3.8 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds sniffing it in 2022/23 (up from 1 percent in 2016). Analysis of deaths from 2005 to 2019 showed they rose from around 5 per year at the start of this timeframe, to around 30 per year after 2016.

Adam Waugh is co-founder of PsyAware, a support organization for psychedelic users and practitioners. Whilst he makes clear that “the vast majority of users don’t experience harm” he warns that “ketamine can be dependency forming.”

Ketamine’s other secret sauce is its dissociative properties, which perhaps make it a perfect drug for the post-pandemic, doom-scroll era. “The effect of the last five years—with COVID-19 and its disruption to young people’s lives, not to mention the increasing ubiquity of devices—has made everything less connected,” says Waugh. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the drugs that are becoming more widely used, including ketamine, are drugs of disconnection.

“It allows you to block out emotional pain.”

Prescription Unfulfilled

As well as ketamine, Waugh also includes benzodiazepines and other normally prescribed anxiolytics (anxiety medications) in his suite of disconnecting substances for a disconnected epoch. These include the likes of diazepam, alprazolam (Xanax), or pregabalin, and there was a very slight increase (from 512 from 509) for benzos in this year’s death data.

Whether it’s a rough sleeper poly-using prescription drugs with heroin, crack or booze, a student self-medicating anxiety, or a raver trying to nod off after a night out, taking them has never been easier or more normalized. A quick scan of Telegram finds pills starting at around £1 a pop, while buying one blister pack of 30 pills reduces the unit price to 75p. This makes them cheap enough to survive a cost-of-living crisis, while conveniently salving the many blights of a deprived society and carrying an aura of respectability.

“They can feel more legitimate, in a way,” says Ian Hamilton, Associate Professor of Addiction at the University of York. “People can think it’s safer because they’re taking a prescription drug, but of course that’s no guarantee at all because it depends who’s supplying it.

“They’re not as stigmatized as a drug like heroin, and you can do them discreetly.”

Previously, prescription drugs sold illegally tended to be genuine products diverted from pharmaceutical settings. Waugh says they’re now often made in India or China—a fake, branded, blister pack of Bensedin diazepam or the opiate Oxycodone will often be a lottery in terms of its actual contents. WEDINOS, the Welsh drug testing service, have found the deadly synthetic opioid nitazene laced in both across recent months.

Is the Message Getting Through About High Strength Pills?

MDMA-related deaths jumped from 51 In 2022 to 79 in 2023—a 35 percent increase. London nightclub fabric recently posted about a series of hospitalisations from high strength pills, a message reinforced by drugs checking agency The Loop who, last weekend, released an alert that one in four of ecstasy pills they were testing contained over 200mg—roughly twice a standard adult dose.

After a Covid-induced slump in MDMA and ecstasy strength, these new cornea-rattling gurners offer a challenge to harm-reduction services and drugs workers trying to educate people on the new rules—most importantly, start with a quarter. But is the great British public listening?

“It seems to me that most people who take pills know about the strength and are pretty responsible,” says Waugh. Of the 79 deaths, 40 were under 30 years of age and 16 of those were under 20. “There’s a subgroup who still take pills in very harmful ways,” he says.

Booze: the Most Harmful Drug of All?

With the increase in cocaine-related fatalities, the tendency of heroin users to have a history of alcohol use or misuse, and the most recent stats that revealed booze-specific deaths reached a record 10,048 in 2022, the question continues to linger: is alcohol—great smoother of social anxiety, foundation stone of “democracy”—the UK’s most harmful drug of all?

“I’d say so,” says Ian Hamilton. “We’ve had a real problem since the pandemic. During Covid, there were roughly three groups: a third of people who were abstinent and pretty much continued. A third you’d describe as moderate, who increased slightly. Then there’s the last third, who were already drinking at risky levels and drank even more. That’s unlikely to come down and that’s the group that really worries me.”

Follow David on X @dhillierwrites

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