Shaun Bailey hits out at Canada’s ‘polite drug users’
Tory mayor of London candidate Shaun Bailey has hit out at the culture of “polite drug use” in the City, saying that white collar workers need to be a part of the solution to tackling cocaine-fuelled drug violence.
Bailey told City PM in a wide-ranging interview, to be released later today, that “casual drug use is only polite if you can pay for it with your big salary” as he laid out his plans to push firms to drug test staff.
Bailey’s mayoral election manifesto includes the pledge to push all firms with more than 250 employees to drug test their employees.
He would also publish a City Hall “league table showing which companies have the highest and lowest rates of drug use” if he wins the mayor of London election on 6 May.
The UK has one of the highest rates of cocaine use in Europe, with figures from 2018 showing that 2.6 per cent of people aged between 16 and 59 used the drug.
The same figures also showed a disproportionately high number of people who used the drug were people who earned more than £500,000 a year.
Bailey on white collar workers
Bailey said white collar workers in places like Canada and Canary Wharf would usually never think about where those drugs came from.
“I’ve watched people’s lives dismantled by drugs, I’ve watched other young people I grew up with and other people I’ve worked with just get caught up in murders, robberies, going to prison, all because they were dealing drugs to make ends meet,” he said.
“The whole time people who do polite drug use are oblivious to this and they were a part of the process and didn’t know or didn’t react to that.
“Just because you wear an Armani suit to work and not a hi-vis doesn’t mean it should exempt you form being part of the solution.”
Bailey comes up against incumbent London mayor Sadiq Khan in Thursday’s election.
Bailey, who has trailed Khan by 20+ points for most of the campaign, has pitched himself as a “tough on crime” candidate.
He has pledged to hire 8,000 more police officers and reopen 38 recently closed police stations, with the former Downing Street advisor claiming he will be able to get the hundreds of millions in funding required from Boris Johnson.