From Harm to Hope: Tackling County Lines
Yesterday the Government launched From Harm to Hope, its 10 year plan to reduce drug use, cut crime, and save lives.
This is a really important, and thoughtful, strategy and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
The Health Secretary summed up the current situation very well indeed in an interview with The Guardian yesterday:
“Drugs ruin lives… Addiction to drugs is thought to be linked to about half of all thefts, burglaries and robberies, and the use of powder cocaine alone drives a criminal market worth about £2bn.
“People having a line of cocaine may not think that they’re causing anyone harm, or that they’re playing a part in a criminal enterprise, but they are actually the final link in a chain that has suffering, violence and exploitation at every stage.
“Behind every illicit drug is a human cost: the “county lines” operations that increasingly involve young people, human trafficking and the use of “cuckooing”, where drug dealers target the most vulnerable and use their homes for criminal activity.”
The 10 year plan details how the Government plans to break drug supply chains while simultaneously reducing the demand for drugs by getting people suffering from addiction into treatment, and deterring recreational drug use.
This is an issue of huge concern for us locally. We’ve all read the headlines about Egerton Court and County Lines. Some of that is exaggerated reporting, but the problem is also deeper and more complex than that.
Spend any time at The Well Communities, and you see how drugs and addiction affect people’s lives profoundly: young people with their whole lives ahead of them spiralling into addiction and crime; fathers and mothers losing any connection with their families and children due to a single-minded focus on their addition, and frustration that with recovery it is hard to find someone who will take a chance on you.
You may think that casual drug use hurts no one, but you’re wrong. It directly fuels the county lines drug gangs that import drugs into communities like ours. That line of coke was most likely brought to your dealer by a young, vulnerable person who has been exploited into modern slavery.
The commitment by the government in this strategy is to do three things of real substance:
rolling-up over 2,000 county-lines drugs gangs by targeting the organised crime groups behind them and going after their money;
investing £780-million in drug treatment and recovery,
and exploring how to best deter the use of recreational drugs through targeted action.
Supported by £900million of funding, this strategy aims to reduce crime and improve people’s lives. Drug misuse costs society almost £20billion every year - and is directly responsible for nearly half of all burglaries, robberies and other acquisitive crime that we see.
While the proof will be in the pudding, I strongly believe that if we hope to break the cycle of abuse and violence that follows drug crime, then this plan is a very good start indeed.
