Crush the evil dealers who enslave children

THIS paper today highlights a frightening crime wave sweeping the country, as more than 1,000 gangs enlist children as young as 12 to peddle heroin and crack cocaine in a vicious trade worth an estimated £1.8billion a year.

Though our investigation focuses on rural Norfolk, where more than 700 suspects have been taken off the streets over the last 20 months, so-called ‘county-line’ drug dealers have spread their tentacles from inner cities to every police area in the UK, using dedicated mobile phone lines to arrange deliveries.

Contemptibly, they recruit vulnerable children from care homes or outside school gates, calculating that minors are likely to escape arrest.

In a further indictment of a failing care system, it also emerges that local authorities move some young drug couriers from London, supposedly to protect them from the capital’s gangs – only for them to join others in the provinces.

Wherever drugs are sold, of course, other crimes flourish to pay for them. Indeed, so great is the scale of the threat that Norfolk police have dedicated nine out of ten frontline officers to tackling it.

This paper applauds their success in containing the problem. But until other forces show the same determination to crack down on the dealers, the worry is that it will simply spread elsewhere. In Durham, for instance, the chief constable has even called for legalising cannabis.

The sooner police stop sending conflicting signals on drugs – and join forces to track down the gang leaders and stamp out this evil trade – the safer Britain will be.