Javid blames middle class for fuelling surge in drug crime

MIDDLE-CLASS professionals are fuelling bloodshed on Britain’s streets with their desire for drugs, the Home Secretary warned last night.

Sajid Javid said those who took cocaine and Ecstasy at dinner parties were ‘not innocent’ over the rise in violence sweeping the country.

In a hard-hitting intervention, he condemned recreational drug use among the wealthy for being responsible for warfare among gangs.

This includes those running ‘county lines’ networks, which are named after the lucrative telephone lines used to organise the trade. He said middle-class drug users were fuelling the knife and gun crime epidemic that was killing young people.

Demand for drugs led to county lines gangs luring children as young as 1 into becoming couriers – and unwittingly being ensnared in a web of brutality and intimidation.

Over the past weeks the Daily Mail has highlighted how the county lines menace has grown. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Javid pledged a ‘fightback’ against the criminals who ‘ruin lives and damage society’.

He spoke out as he launched a review – the biggest ever carried out by the Home Office – of drug misuse.