Tory MP Lets The Khat Out...

According to Tory MP Mark Lancaster, some 10 million tons of the drug khat are imported into the UK every single week. For those not down with the youth or up with their obscure drug lore, khat is a mildly stimulating, fairly pointless bitter narcotic grass, used by many East African men.

The Right Honourable Halfwit for Milton Keynes was just doing what comes natural to a Tory backbencher- trying to whip up some anti-drug, anti-immigrant hysteria during a House of Commons Early Day Motion- when he casually dropped the 10m figure. Ten million tons of khat means 200kg of the the stuff for every man woman and child in the UK, every single week. That’s a lot of chewing to get through.

According to (way off the) Mark Lancaster, the UK consumes about ten times the amount of khat that it burns in coal (about 1m tonnes per week). Either some people are seriously trying to get a high off the stuff (although according to our team of dedicated pharmacological investigators, even 200kg might not give you as much of a hit as a Poundland energy drink) or a Tory MP is talking out of his arse. No prizes for guessing which.