DRUGS: THE NUMBERS
Manchester. Led by Assaf, they used the Silk Road illicit marketplace from May 2011 until October 2013, when the FBI brought it down and seized its servers.
The Silk Road operated on the ‘dark web’ – the part of the internet unseen by ordinary browsers.
Some 1,786 drug trafficking crimes were recorded by Greater Manchester Police in year to March, compared to 1,324 the year before – a rise of 35pc.
Trafficking offences include producing or supplying illegal controlled drugs, transporting or storing them, or manufacturing, importing, or exporting them.
The punishment for drug trafficking can vary from a simple fine to a life sentence, depending on the defendant’s culpability and harm associated with the offence and the quantity and type of drug involved. Across England and Wales, police forces recorded 26,585 drug trafficking crimes in 2017/18, up from 25,133 the year before. When the size of the local population is taken into account, there were 64 trafficking crimes recorded per 100,000 people in Greater Manchester compared to the national average of 40.
Merseyside had the highest rate of drug trafficking crimes, with 92.3 recorded offences for every 100,000 people. Unlike other crimes like burglary, where a victim will always call police, drug dealing is a transaction which only comes to public attention following a proactive operation.
One senior GMP source pointed to the conviction of key figures.
He told the M.E.N.: “In the last 12 to 18 months we’ve put away a lot of dealers. But it’s the tip of the iceberg. We can only record what we catch.”
Official figures suggest that the number of drug users is on the wane – yet the harm being caused is rising sharply. According to a survey by NHS Digital, around 8pc of adults took illicit drugs in 2016/17, compared to 10pc in 2006/7. Yet drug-related deaths are at the highest level since comparable records began in 1993.
There were 2,593 such deaths registered in England and Wales in 2016, a rise of 5pc per compared to the previous year – and an increase of 58pc since 2006.
TOMORROW: In the second part of a special report, John Scheerhout looks at the toll of the drugs industry on Greater Manchester and the police efforts to tackle the problem.