The World According to Vice. Vice Magazine

      EASTERN PROMISE

      MUSLIMS SERVE UP THE BEST CRACK IN LONDON | BY ANDY CAPPER PHOTO BY ALEX STURROCK

      Published February 2006

      Britain’s cocaine intake has skyrocketed since Oasis made every idiot in dear old Blighty want a bit of the blow. That’s why the quality’s gone down. Dealers now sell it to marketing girls at mobile-phone companies or 15-year-old middle-class car thieves up to 30 times a day. The real junkies, aka their best customers, can’t get high from the shit that these amateurs are willing to buy. Hence, crack cocaine use has risen 87 percent in the last three years. You heard me right. It’s the fault of Oasis that London is now full of blue-lipped crack fiends.

      More crack buyers means more crack dealers. The crack-dealing chain was once made up almost exclusively of Yardies, scousers, and East End gangsters. But recently, fundamentalist Muslim gangs, some of whom employ children as young as two years old, are strong-arming their way into the business.

      These are the cheery fellows who buy war-atrocity videos and feel empathy for the people who blew working-class folks to little pieces with bombs made out of Jean-Paul Gaultier cologne (they chose it because it comes in metal cans and when it explodes, the shrapnel darts out of the bomb like an X-Men weapon).

      Yardie crack dealers did things the old way. They’d get boys to come around to their scary house, which always smelled like someone stuffed an old sock with cheese, and they’d give them baggies of crack to sell. However, the dealers were always nervous going to pick up their wares because a lot of the time those houses were being stalked. The constant ragga parties and prostitutes knocking on the door at 7:30 AM were sort of a giveaway.

      The Muslim crack-dealer gangs are a lot more savvy, and they’re undercutting the Yardies and making the crack trade their own. In east London there’s a place called Brick Lane. It’s often referred to as Curry Mile. An Indian feast there costs almost nothing, and you can’t help but think, “How can they afford to employ all these people and maintain the rent money?” The answer is because they’re stealing the crack-dealer runners away from the Yardies by giving them drug pouches like the picture you see here, and even occasionally performing fellatio on them! There’s almost no chance of getting arrested when you’re buying a samosa from a Brick Lane curry house. Not even if the samosa is stuffed with 35 bags of crack and heroin. The police are so nervous about descending on Muslims (hence the July 7 bombings) that crack dealers are getting all their shit from them. Peace!

      It costs about £250 for a crack dealer to buy a samosa or onion bhaji stuffed with white and brown. They can make a £200 profit on that. Can you blame them?

      The 15-year-old Muslim who sold us this samosa told us, “The Koran forbids lots of things. If you are a Westerner that’s all you see—the restrictions on women and the strict rules about diet. Westerners can’t comprehend the code because it’s been so mis-represented by the media. In reality, the Koran is the most honest guide to life you could ever have. It’s forbidden to lie, but if you are lying to combat infidels then lying is OK. In the same way, we look at the way we are profiting from this trade and at the same time, poisoning weak infidels and ultimately destroying their lives, and we are thankful to God. It’s perfect. We like it because we consider it jihad and they like it because they are tripping their fucking balls off.” Hey-ooooh!

       This story was printed in our Lies Issue and is a big fat lie. Did you really think that crack was getting sold in samosas?”

      Worst omelette ever. Thanks, rimonabant. Photo by Maggie Lee

      NEW FRONTIERS OF SOBRIETY

      BEING ANTI-HIGH FEELS ANTI-GOOD | BY HAMILTON MORRIS

      Published August 2009

      Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In particle physics we learn that for all matter there can be antimatter of opposite charge. But what about drugs? Is there an anti-weed, an anti-heroin, or an anti-beer? Pharmacologically speaking, the answer is yes. Scientists can identify regions of the brain stimulated by a given drug and then create an anti-drug with the opposite mechanism of action. Substances that do the opposite of common recreational drugs are useful in overdoses but rarely become recreational drugs in their own right for the simple reason that they make you feel totally and completely miserable. I decided to systematically test three of the most powerful anti-highs over the course of one week. Here are my results:

      ANTI-WEED RIMONABANT: DOSE: 60 MG

      It has long been known that smoking weed gives people the munchies, so logically it should follow that deactivating the receptors in the brain responsible for getting high would give you anti-munchies. Pharmaceutical researchers tested a drug called rimonabant with just such an action and found that it was incredibly effective. The drug was approved in Europe and appeared to be one of the best weight-loss drugs in history. Rimonabant is inexpensive, effective, and totally non-addictive. Unfortunately, in addition to giving users anti-munchies it was found to have a prominent side effect called anti-happiness, aka suicidal depression. In the months following the drug’s clinical trials, there were over 70 patients displaying signs of suicidality, two completed suicides, a host of seizures, precipitated multiple sclerosis, domestic abuse, and a man who strangled his daughter.

      When you smoke weed, it stimulates parts of your brain called cannabinoid receptors. This may seem obvious, but our brain has these receptors for reasons other than getting stoned. Our cannabinoid receptors have an array of crucial regulatory functions in the unstoned brain. We depend on a cocktail of natural weedlike chemicals called endocannabinoids to regulate inflammation, appetite, and maintain some semblence of emotional stability. When you take rimonabant, not only is it impossible for you to get stoned on weed, it’s also impossible for your body to feel its natural endocannabinoids. I have heard more than one stoner speculate about a future where the government requires rimonabant implants at birth to prevent the population from “expanding their minds”. Unlikely, but one must wonder what it would feel like to live in such a world!

      Since normal drugs are generally taken socially at night, I decide to do my anti-high experiments first thing in the morning and alone. But I’m curious about how my friend Sam would respond to rimonabant so I persuade him to try it with me. Sam has smoked weed all day, every day, for the last five years. When I suggest he take a pill that would make it impossible for him to get high for at least 24 hours, he is not too keen on the idea. But after asking about 50 or 60 times and offering to buy him weed in return, he cautiously accepts my offer.

      Both Sam and I take a whopping dose of rimonabant three times higher than the maximum dose prescribed for weight loss. After swallowing the pills, Sam goes out to meet his weed dealer in Manhattan. A half hour later, he texts me to say he’s having an attack of “explosive diarrhoea”. I’m also feeling the onset as a subtle but persistent anxiety. Sam comes back to my apartment and shakily loads a pipe. He takes a deep hit, waits, and shakes his head, saying he feels “absolutely nothing”.

      We decide to go out and get some food at a Polish diner. Upon walking into the restaurant we realise that our waiter is an incredibly slow guy we’ve had in the past who never refills the small water glasses. Both of us tense up. I order an egg-white omelette and Sam interrupts me to say, “What are you talking about? You want the whole egg. Why would you just want the whites?”

      “I usually get egg whites. They’re good. Is there something wrong with that?”

      Sam turns to the waiter. “He wants the whole egg.”

      I look down and see that my hands are trembling. I remember reading studies that suggest rimonabant lowers the seizure threshold. I don’t mention this to Sam. My omelette