Drug mules
week. They are known as ‘clean skins’ because they have no police record and rarely attract attention.
“Once they’d sold all their ‘food’ I’d send a new group up to replace them or I’d give a girl a pack to plug, drive her to the bus station and see her off.
“People are running three or four lines at a time and there are at least 5,000 going now. Some will tell you that it’s our unjust, unequal society that grooms and exploits kids – but that is b ******* . They only care about the money.”
Campaigners want to raise awareness of the scandal, which has also been highlighted in a BBC documentary, so mules can be referred for help like victims of child sexual exploitation are. Some police forces have now set up dedicated units but this is so fragmentary that a multiagency national response is required.
This week the Government awarded £280,000 to projects helping children and vulnerable adults escape violent gangs while Home Secretary Amber Rudd has introduced laws to shut down County Lines phone numbers. But
parenting – it is child exploitation, pure and simple. And we need your help to tackle it.”
For more information go to www.stgilestrust.org.uk ■■Young people going missing and travelling to seaside or market towns ■■No turning up to school or going missing from class ■■Having money, clothes or accessories which they are unable to account for ■■Receiving an excessive number of texts and phone calls ■■Relationships with controlling/older individuals or groups ■■Carrying weapons ■■Significant decline in school results/performance ■■Self-harm or significant changes in emotional wellbeing
– easy-toremember mobile phone lines for drug orders ■■Going country – travelling to rural areas to sell class A drugs ■■The sticks or the woods – the country towns where the runners operate ■■Food – the drugs ■■Whisky or brandy – white or brown heroin ■■Cuckooing – setting up a drug den in the home of an addict or vulnerable person ■■G-pack - £1,000 worth of drugs to be split for deal ■■Plugging – hiding drugs in body cavities ■■Clean skins – child drug runners with no criminal record Stockport MP Ann Coffey, who chairs the All-Party Group for Runaway and Missing Children, said this was just “a drop in the ocean”.
She said: “We need a national strategy where communities, children’s services, schools, parents and agencies work closer together with the police to raise awareness of this gross exploitation which is ruining children’s lives.
“These criminal cowards hide behind children and get them to do their dirty work for them.
“Criminal child exploitation is the new grooming scandal and is exactly the same as child sexual exploitation in places like Rotherham and Rochdale.”