Cocaine fuelled the credit crunch, former government drug Czar David Nutt has said, because it helped bankers in the City of London become “overconfident”.


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“Bankers use cocaine and got us into this terrible mess,” said Professor Nutt, who was in charge of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs from 2008-09.

“It is a ‘more’ drug.”

Nutt added that cocaine helped create a “culture of excitement” in the City and the “drive for more and more and more” in the frenzied run-up to the credit crunch in 2008, which started the current round of problems hitting the global economy.

Cocaine’s rôle in the banking crisis has long been speculated upon and was blamed in a study by Dr Chris Luke a few years ago.

“People were making insane decisions and thinking they were 110% right, which led to the current chaos,” said Luke.

Others see its use in financial circles only as symptom of the crisis, pointing to deeper structural factors.