With its smiling face logo and tempting offer to buy five and get the sixth free, this loyalty card at first appears as innocuous as those offered by any coffee shop or supermarket.
But it is being handed out to wealthy cocaine users in Britain to boost sales and loyalty and reveals just how fierce competition between drug dealers fighting turfs wars for 'market dominance' has become.
Drug campaigners warned that the emergence of such loyalty cards shows how middle-class cocaine users were fuelling violence — including knife and gun crime between gangs — on city streets throughout the country.
The card appears to mimic the imagery associated with the dance and rave music cultures of the 1980's and 1990's, suggesting they are targeting those in their 30's, 40's and even older. And its developers — almost inevitably an organised criminal gang — have adopted well-honed marketing techniques intended to promote brand loyalty and increase use by 'customers'.
The card 'scheme' offers stamps for bulk purchases giving the sixth and then 12th wrap of cocaine free, said the source who handed it to the Daily Telegraph.
A wrap of cocaine generally costs between £50 and £80, depending on the quality, the source said, adding that it is understood a network of couriers deliver the drug.
The loyalty card reads: "One freebie for every five stamps you collect!! Love Loyal-T". The smiley face design on the front is evocative of the 1980's acid dance scene.
David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said: "People who are buying cocaine on a Friday night in the City or are having drugs delivered to a dinner party or a house party in a wealthy suburb have got to look at themselves in the mirror and make the connection between their drug use and what is happening on the streets to serve their recreational weekend habit.
"Having cocaine delivered to your door is as easy as hailing a taxi or ordering a pizza. There is a lucrative market worth billions of pounds and what this means in communities like mine is that teenagers and school kids, who are almost always black and from deprived backgrounds, are essentially foot soldiers for gangsters much higher up the food chain."
Harry Shapiro, of DrugWise, an online drug information service, said: "The level of competition on the street means they have to offer an incentive to get their customers to stay with the one dealer.
"But this card also shows how there are two very different ends of the drug dealing spectrum. At the one end, there is an offer of a modicum of support to the buyer. But at the other end, they are trying to beat the competition, and that competition results in violence on the streets.
"I suspect it is also linked to the issue surrounding 'county lines' where some dealers have expanded outside big cities like London because the dangers in cities have become so serious."
