Cocaine hotlines boom

So many gangs are operating that crime fighters are only able to focus on around a fifth of them at any one time – with 200 live investigations currently underway.

Sue Southern, NCA deputy director for commodities, said: “Our previous estimate was there were about 800 lines operating, but it is now over 1,000. Each line can bring in up to £5,000 a day.”

That equates to around £1.8million per phone line a year. Nearly 15 per cent of them – 152 – are operating in East Anglia, it is estimated.

At the Bay of Gibraltar last month, Spanish police seized the largest ever cocaine shipment in Europe, weighing 8.74 tons.

Drugs were hidden in a boat bringing bananas from Colombia, where cocaine production has more than doubled since 2008.

The haul originated from the Gulf Clan, former paramilitaries who are considered to be Colombia’s biggest drugs cartel.

The NCA is investigating who the British gangs are in Spain and the UK who help distribute drugs that make it to county lines bosses.

Vince O’Brien, NCA head of operations for commodities, explained: “County lines gangs target areas of high addiction where there will be customers making daily purchases of crack cocaine and heroin.”

County lines involves criminals in London and other cities sending more dealers to suburbs, market towns and coastal resorts, to feed growing habits, while risking violent turf wars.

Organised crooks often coerce vulnerable people and children as young as 12 into selling drugs for them in far-flung areas using the dedicated mobile phone numbers.

Recruited “pushers,” often addicts themselves, have in many cases been reported missing where they previously lived, or the homes of local addicts are taken over.

An NCA survey revealed that guns, knives and “acid-like substances” are used by the gangs.

London gangs are sending drug runners nationwide, those in Liverpool are targeting north Wales, Birmingham gangs are operating across the Midlands and those in Manchester are covering the north west.

There is believed to be a complex network, with police finding one vulnerable child being found trafficked in two different parts of the country.

In 2008, 310 tons of cocaine were produced in Colombia over 272,000 acres.

By 2016, nearly 494,000 was used to produce around 700 tons of the drug, which has also increased in purity.

After being brought to the UK via Africa and Spain, powdered cocaine is sold to recreational users.

The rest is turned into crack cocaine in makeshift laboratories and sold by county lines gangs to addicts.

Melanie Onn, Labour MP for Great Grimsby, warned this week county lines gangs were targeting middle-class children in police “blind spots” to peddle their drugs on the assumption of officers will not be monitoring those areas.