COCAINESPOTTING

IT IS midday and Jason, an Edinburgh student, is preparing for his first
drug deal of the day. Three grams of cocaine, individually wrapped in white
lined paper, and a plastic bag containing 20 white ecstasy pills, lie on
the top of his desk next to a half-finished essay.

The drugs are for John, a wealthy third-year Edinburgh University student
who is throwing a dinner party for five friends in the New Town the
following evening. He wants some recreational drugs to compliment the
champagne and red wine that he's serving his guests and he's due to arrive
at the two-bedroom Stockbridge flat in five minutes.

Dido is playing softly in the background and Jason, dressed in jeans and a
blue polo top, is arguing with his girlfriend Megan when the buzzer goes.

"Hello! Hello! It's me," booms a well-spoken voice from the intercom.
Without a word Jason presses the buzzer and lets him in. Then he moves the
packs of cocaine and ecstasy from the desk onto the low coffee table and
waits on the sofa.

John's been here before and he knows the score. Wearing brown cords,
trainers and a blue hooded top, he marches into the room and shakes Jason's
hand. He doesn't bother with small talk.

"Everything here?" he asks. "Any problems?" Jason points to the stash of
drugs and watches as John throws down a bundle of notes. Then, following an
unspoken protocol (buyers must always offer their dealer a line of coke),
John opens one of the cocaine wraps and pours some of the white power on
the table. "I'll just rack up a line quickly," he said, taking out a Visa
card and using it to scrape the powder into three long lines along the edge
of the glass table - one for Jason, one for his girlfriend and one for him.

He rolls up a ?20 note and offers it to Jason. "The coke's not bad and you
should have a good night on the Es - they're really good - new ones called
Bin Ladens," Jason laughs.

John's two female flatmates, he tells Jason, are busy cooking Beef
Wellington for tomorrow's dinner party. The plan, he says, is that once
they have eaten and drank to their hearts content his guests will have the
'pudding' choice of cocaine or ecstasy. "We'll probably play some silly
drinking games like Fuzzy Duck, listen to some tunes and then all head out
to a club at about 1am," he said. "It might get a bit messy - but that's
half the fun."

Once they have all 'snorted' to their hearts content, John stuffs his drugs
down the side of his right trainer and walks rather nervously back to his
luxurious flat. Only when he's gone does Jason count the money left on the
table. For three grams of cocaine at ?50 each and 20 ecstasy pills, at ?5
each, there should be ?250. "It would have been really bad form to count it
while he was here. It's not that he can't afford it. Money really is no
object. The rich ones make up most of my clientele - they're the ones who
buy loads of coke for dinner parties or weekends away - or just because
they 're bored."

There is a 30-minute lull before his next client, a student called Lou,
arrives. To kill time Jason starts typing up the rest of his essay on the
computer. He's feeling slightly nervous because it's the first time he's
invited Lou to his flat.

"If I don't know someone then I'll usually agree to meet them somewhere -
usually in a pub - and do the deal there. It's too risky to have complete
strangers turning up here. You never know, they could be the police. I only
agreed Lou could come here because she's a friend of a friend who's told me
she's trustworthy," he said.

It quickly becomes clear that Lou has also never bought drugs before. "I've
come about the drugs," she bellows into the intercom in a Home Counties
accent . Jason is tempted not to let her in.

Lou, a first-year student, is stunning - tanned with long brown wavy hair,
Levi jeans, crisp white shirt and trainers. However, something strange
happens to her voice as she stands at the door chewing her lip and waiting
to be invited in. She's pretending she's got a Scots accent - and one from
Niddrie at that. "Hiya big man," she says, "d'ya have the drugs?" Jason
suppresses a smile and asks her in.

Lou frantically makes polite conversation, telling him that she and 10
friends are heading to the Highlands to stay at her parents' Scottish
residence - an estate in Fort William. Five boys and five girls would be
spending the weekend eating and drinking at her parents' expense. They may
ride horses or walk during the day and have four-course sit-down meals with
her parents in the evening. Then, when her parents went to bed, the fun
would start.

"None of us are stupid about drugs, it's not as if we're addicts or
anything like that," she says. "It's just a bit of fun. This is the first
time I've bought drugs myself. The last time we all came up here was in
December, in the shooting season, and one of the boys bought some cocaine -
it was such a hoot. When my parents had gone to bed we took down a mirror
and piled all the coke on it. We all armed ourselves with rolled up notes
and just tucked in. We got on such a high and ran around the house doing
daft things like jumping from sofa to sofa without touching the ground."

Then, on to business. "Do you have some coke - enough for about 10 people
to have fun with for a night?" she asks. While Jason is counting out the
wraps by his desk Lou diverts her eyes. She also averts her gaze when she
put the money on the table. She leaves quickly. No-one had told her about
offering coke around.

"She's new to it all - she couldn't get out fast enough," Jason says. "I'm
quite flattered she put that funny accent on. I get that quite a lot from
posh students. They obviously don't want to stand out too much and try and
blend in - and instead of saying 'Yah' they say 'Aye'."

Three more clients, two men and a woman bought drugs from Jason that
afternoon. One teenage boy, originally from Aberdeen, asked for seven grams
of speed - ?7-a-gram according to Jason - for clubbing in Edinburgh that
night. Another male student wanted a batch of 20 Es to keep him and his
pals dancing all night, while a 40-year-old unemployed Edinburgh woman said
she needed cannabis to help her sleep.

Throughout the day Jason wrestles with his essay but rarely manages to
tackle it for any length of time before the intercom buzzes again. At 5pm,
he puts the latch on his door and turns off his mobile phone. "That's it,
I' ve nothing more to sell - and I've got an essay to write," he says, as
his girlfriend starts cooking dinner.

"I could do so much more business but I have my own life to lead - so many
students take drugs, it's unbelievable," he adds. "I would estimate about
70% at least. It's become the young person's alcohol.

"But at least it's not as bad as alcohol because once they leave uni they
probably won't carry on with the drugs whereas with drink - the older you
get the more alcohol you consume," he said.

Jason's view that drug use is only a temporary diversion found support in
the unlikeliest of places last week. A radical report from the Commons home
affairs select committee recommended that ecstasy should be reclassified to
attract a lesser jail sentence. The MPs said for young people, using drugs
was a "passing phase" and that the priority should be education rather than
throwing drug users in jail.

"We have to recognise that many young people will continue to use drugs,"
said the report. "In most cases this is a passing phase which they will
grow out of ... It makes sense to give priority to educating in harm
minimisation rather than prosecuting them."

Recommendations to downgrade ecstasy were, however, rejected by David
Blunkett, the Home Secretary, who said it was "not on the Government's agenda".

Professor Neil McKeganey, of Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse
Research is unsurprised students from privileged backgrounds take cocaine
and ecstasy. A survey conducted into drug-taking habits in five private and
five state schools across Scotland discovered 60% of 16-year-olds in the
private schools had tried illegal drugs as opposed to 50% in state schools.

"These private school children are the forerunners to the privileged
university types," said McKeganey. "One of the main reasons we discovered
that the usage was higher in private schools is that they were residential
and if drugs came into the dormitory everyone took part - it's a
camaraderie thing - and the same idea could be applied to wealthy students
all living together."

McKeganey also said that it was the glamorous image of cocaine which
attracted affluent students to it. "It's associated with success and
showbiz rather than the victim that is the heroin addict. It is becoming
more readily available and is now part of the 'dinner party' middle-class set."

It was hard to tell whether affluent students were taking drugs as a
rebellious act. "Often people who are successful in work neglect their
children - it is not just the more deprived families who suffer from this.

"Sometimes if parents are so focused on their career or making money they
don't pay attention to their kids - or send them off to boarding school at
an early age, and the kids can react to that."

McKeganey believes it is risky to assume students will grow out of using
drugs like cocaine, a view backed by Alistair Ramsay, from Scotland Against
Drugs. He said: "We should be absolutely clear that this drug is not just a
danger in its own right, it can prove to be highly addictive."

Despite the fact Jason snorts a line of coke every time a client comes
round, he doesn't see himself as a "drug user" - he just deals to make ends
meet. "I don't really take drugs, the drugs scene is not really my thing,"
he said.

The 28-year-old, originally from Inverness, said he never planned to sell
drugs for living. Now he has about 80 wealthy university clients and makes
almost ?1,000 a week from dealing.

Every week Jason meets his dealer and buys thousands of pounds worth of
drugs - a mixture of cannabis, speed, cocaine and Es. He is aware of the
dangers of getting caught and never keeps drugs in his house for more than
five hours.

And he prefers dealing to affluent students - the reason, he says, is
because he knows they'll pay, and they make him laugh. "There is a way of
ordering drugs over the phone. You would never say outright: 'Can I have 10
grams of cocaine?' The code world for cocaine is 'tickets' and Es are
called 'beans' or 'sweets'."

Jason enjoys the upper class students' delight in dabbling with the more
seedy side of life. "They love coded words and the idea they have a dealer
- - you can hear the excitement in their voices when they ring up.

"I think it's just a big game for them."