Very clearly, cocaine abuse has moved from the fash frat and P3Ps and spread to the white-collared executive with sky-high ambitions and an elite B-school tag to flaunt. "Snorting a line of cocaine just before a high-profile meeting can work wonders for you," says Niranjan Abbey, a management student in Delhi. "Cocaine increases your confidence levels." Call centre executives are the latest addicts of party drugs. With easy money at an impressionable age and high aspirations, the call centre executives have all the makings of a typical abuser.
Since it is an upper, cocaine does not slow down the user like, say, alcohol does.In fact, it perks the person up and sends energy levels soaring—that is, while the effect lasts (usually, clinical depression follows).It has also got the reputation of being a sex enhancer.That the flip side includes the possibility of stroke and cardiac arrest is often forgotten. Many believe cocaine does not have any after-effects the next morning. Says an HR executive at an mnc bank: "After partying on coke till three in the night, I manage to reach office by nine next morning." Little wonder then that it is moving beyond the lush ambit of designers, top models, industrialists and rich housewives.
True, cocaine abuse has not reached alarming proportions. But the soaring graph of the illegal transit and trade is an indicator that the number of abusers is increasing. Twenty-five years ago cocaine was a problem of the rich and the famous in the US. Today, coke and its cheaper version, crack, is an issue that cuts across class lines. That's an ominous trajectory.
