Best of 2025: How ketamine’s on the rise and getting into the UK
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recreational use of the Class B drug ketamine doubled in 2024. A Sunday Times investigation has looked into where it's coming from and why it's so hard to police.
This episode was first published in April.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory
Guest: Katie Gatens, Commissioning Editor, The Sunday Times News Review.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Olivia Case.
Further reading: One gram of ketamine and its 4,000-mile journey to the UK.
Further listening: The truth behind the drama Adolescence
If you or someone you know needs drugs help or advice, visit talktofrank.com
Photo: Getty Images.
Get in touch: thestory@thetimes.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Manveen from The Story, wishing you a very happy and restful Christmas period. |
| 0:06.1 | While we step away for a festive break, we didn't want to leave you without anything to listen to, |
| 0:10.8 | so we've selected some of our favourite and most memorable episodes from 2025 for you to catch up on. |
| 0:17.9 | Happy listening. |
| 0:27.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvien Rana. |
| 0:38.2 | So it was the early hours of the morning on December 4th, 2023. |
| 0:45.9 | And a young Dutch man in a white transit van is waiting to board the Channel Tunnel on the French side to go to the UK. |
| 0:54.6 | The guy was called Mika Vorhans, he was 21 from a small town in the Netherlands. |
| 0:56.0 | And it was a cold pull. |
| 1:00.3 | The UK border police thought that his van looked suspicious and decided to pull him over and check the inside. |
| 1:03.5 | And he told the police that he was heading to Coventry |
| 1:06.9 | to pick up a secondhand motorbike for a friend of a friend. |
| 1:15.6 | They weren't so sure. So when they checked on the inside of his van, they found some plywood that had been hastily sort of fixed to the side, inside of his van. |
| 1:21.6 | And when they removed this plywood, they found 100 kilograms of ketamine. |
| 1:26.6 | It was one of the biggest ever seizures of this plywood, they found 100 kilograms of ketamine. |
| 1:33.0 | It was one of the biggest ever seizures of ketamine heading to the UK. |
| 1:56.2 | The street value would have been about £4 million. Ketamine is on the rise in Britain. |
| 2:02.9 | The figures have exploded with the recreational use of the drug doubling in a year and addiction levels rapidly rising. |
| 2:06.7 | It's become such an issue. |
| 2:08.5 | There's even talk of reclassifying it from a class B to a class A drug. |
| 2:14.6 | But where is it coming from? |
| 2:16.5 | How does it get into the country? And why is it |
... |
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