Yahoo News UK ‘becoming the biggest consumer of cocaine in Europe’, according to security minister
The security minister has said that smartphones have helped the UK on its way to becoming ‘the biggest consumer of cocaine in Europe’.
Ben Wallace said smartphones and encryption had given young people the opportunity to trade drugs, communicate in a safe space and make connections between groups in a way that never happened before.
Leading a debate into the Government’s serious violence strategy, Mr Wallace said: ‘In the past there were plenty of middle men between local gangs and the big, serious, organised criminals running out of Colombia, or Balkans’ gangs.
‘That has reduced, and now what you find is through absolute, often safe and secure, encryption, the ability for young people to order their drugs, gangs to get delivered literally to their door large packets of drugs from Albanian drug gangs, from Serbian drug gangs, or indeed from local drugs.
‘It’s not entirely the copyright of the western Balkans, of United Kingdom citizens.
‘That has put a real power into a system where at the same time the United Kingdom is fast becoming the biggest consumer of cocaine in Europe, so there is a high demand by the consumer.’
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Cocaine was no longer ‘the preserve of the yuppie or the rich’, Mr Wallace said, adding: ‘You are seeing cocaine in my villages and in rural communities and in communities that would previously not have been using cocaine in London.
‘It is a high-margin, high-supply drug at the moment, and that is fuelling that increased violence.
‘And with those Albanians, or with those serious organised criminals, comes the enforcement of those county lines.
‘So they don’t just put a 15-year-old in a house or they ‘cuckoo’ the house, they attach with that 15-year-old a weapon to enforce the drug line.
‘And sometimes, if the 15-year-old is willing or is a participant, they will ruthlessly enforce that county line with violence, and they will kill those people and they’ll kill the local drug dealers if it gets in their way.’
Mr Wallace also told the Commons that the level of violence online and on television that children and young people were now exposed to ‘is going to come back to haunt us’.
The minister said he backed Government plans to crack down on removing harmful material from the internet.
He said: ‘I met this morning with Google about what it could do more of, taking down violence-inspiring videos.
‘The level of violence that my young children are exposed to on television, let alone on the internet, quite early on in the day, is going to come back to haunt us.’
Labour MPs brought up the issue of cuts to policing during the debate.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: ‘Nobody on this side is saying that more police officers on their own can solve the issue of serious violence, but you cannot expect the community to believe that you’re taking the issue seriously unless you provide the right level of police officers.’
