Tube passenger openly smokes crack on packed London Underground

A London Underground commute turned sour when a man suddenly pulled out drug paraphernalia.

Tube passengers could hardly believe their eyes when a passenger tried to light up a crack pipe inside a Victoria line carriage.

Another commuter said they were on going home from work when ‘a dirty, scuffy-looking man’ was behaving ‘oddly and attempting to light a small, metal pipe.’

The passenger, who shared the ordeal on Reddit, said they thought he was drunk and tried to tell him to stop before realising ‘he was attempting to light up some crack.’

The man was ‘high as a kite’ and was ‘phlegming and spitting’ yellow liquid on the floor while trying to make his lighter work to smoke more of the substance, which was ‘largely burnt up mass but still pungent enough to recognise that it was crack,’ the passenger said.

At this point, other people on board moved away from the man ‘unnerved’ and ‘repulsed’ before he took off and boarded another carriage, the passenger said.

They went on to alert station staff, who allegedly said he is a known addict in the area and there are complaints about him every other day, but there is nothing they can do.

Footage from the incident, which happened over the weekend, shows the man sitting just inches from other passengers on the busy carriage.

The commuter, who intervened, claimed this was their second time of seeing someone smoke crack on the Tube.

However, this time, ‘it was much more unnerving experience for everybody involved,’ they said.

Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, commented on the incident on Nick Ferrari’s LBC Breakfast show today, saying ‘smoking crack cocaine on the London Underground is obviously totally unacceptable.’

She said the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the TfL Commissioner Andy Lord will be concerned and ‘looking very closely as to how this happened and what action is taken against that.’

A TfL spokesperson told Metro it is working with police, specialist teams and other agencies ‘to help move vulnerable people away from our network and into help and support.’

‘We want all customers to feel safe when travelling and we understand the alarm this kind of behaviour could cause,’ they added.

The mayor told LBC he would not speak to TfL despite alleged staff inaction and reminded Tube customers they ‘shouldn’t be breaking the law.’

British Transport Police told Metro: ‘We are aware of a post on Reddit over the weekend referring to a man appearing to smoke crack cocaine on the Victoria Line.

‘While the poster states this wasn’t reported to British Transport Police, it is completely unacceptable behaviour which will not be tolerated.’

The most crimes committed on the capital’s transport network between January and August last year happened on the London Underground, the latest TfL figures show.

The Central line saw the most crime incidents, followed by the Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines.

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