Drug dealers use celebrity app to target youngsters

A MOBILe app popular with teenagers and celebrities is peddling drugs to children as young as 13.

Depop, which is used to buy and sell clothing, phones, jewellery, art and music, is openly advertising cannabis and drug paraphernalia.

An investigation found listings for laughing gas, rolling tobacco, imported cigarettes, vodka, marijuana and ‘prerolled spliffs’. Drugs equipment, such as specialist pipes, were also available on the app, which takes a 10 per cent cut from transactions.

Users of the London-based service are typically aged between 16 and 26, although accounts can be opened from the age of 13. Depop has been used by Girls Aloud star sarah Harding and Kate Moss’s model sister Lottie to sell unwanted clothes.

the app insists it prohibits the sale of drugs and drugs paraphernalia. However sellers are known to use sweets and Hollywood brands to entice users into buying drug ‘bundles’.

In one listing, a bag of sweets is part of a £17.50 ‘smoking bundle’ that includes a rastafarithemed marijuana grinder and marijuana pipe. In another, a water pipe in the shape of the star Wars character Yoda forms the centrepiece of a bundle described as ‘a perfect gift for yourself or a friend who loves star Wars as much as smoking bud [marijuana]’.

the investigation by the sunday times comes after the Daily Mail revealed earlier this month how drug dealers are openly using social media to target children.

Karen tyrell, of drug addiction charity Addaction, said the findings were worrying, adding: ‘the internet and social media is an increasingly challenging environment for young people and parents to navigate.’

Depop said fewer than 1 per cent of its listings were prohibited. It said it employed staff 20 hours a day to remove adverts for offending products.