Young Children Running Drugs for UK County Lines Gangs ‘Becoming the Norm’

A young girl paints a picture of herself on the school window as children of key workers take part in school activities at Oldfield Brow Primary School in Altrincham, England, on April 8, 2020. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Children as young as nine running drugs for county lines gangs in England has “become the norm,” said the former children’s commissioner who has urged the government to treat the issue as seriously as terrorism.

Anne Longfield leads the Commission on Young Lives, an independent body, which published a report (pdf) on Friday after spending a year gathering evidence on vulnerable children.

In the report, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” the commission warns that children are the “commodity of choice” for drug dealers who exploit them in order to evade the police.

Longfield told the PA news agency children as young as 9 or 10 were being used to run drugs, and boys aged as young as 14 were even in charge of some county lines operations.

County lines is a term used in the UK to refer to urban drug dealers who supply narcotics to small towns or rural areas, often involving gangs preying on vulnerable people like children and disabled adults.

A line, in criminal parlance, is a drug dealing operation often based around a pay-as-you-go mobile phone number which addicts and users are encouraged to call to place an order.

Last month the Metropolitan Police arrested 230 people and claimed to have smashed 70 county lines during an operation which took £4 million ($4.5 million) worth of heroin and cocaine off the streets.

The latest government figures said there were 10,140 occasions in which criminal exploitation was a factor in assessments of children in need, but the commission believes that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Children in More Middle Class Areas Being Targeted

Longfield said in the last two years, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, two trends have emerged: the targeting of primary school children, and an increasing focus on middle-class children in more affluent suburbs and towns.

She said social media content—especially TikTok and Snapchat videos—was increasingly being used to attract them to county lines operations.

Longfield said: “There are many, many cases. I think it’s now become the norm for the older age primary school child to be involved in the outskirts of running. I’ve been told more and more about the 14-year-olds—even a 13-year-old I’ve heard of—as being involved in that role in a county line.”

She said: “What people say is that while the market was suppressed during the pandemic, actually when it opened up those that were targeting young people went for a younger group of kids to do so, which is horrific—these are children.”

Longfield said they also found evidence of grandmothers being asked to carry or hold on to drugs in order to protect their grandchildren.

She said the cost-of-living crisis had also pushed many children towards county lines operations and said, “We’re seeing kids being put in a really, really difficult position where they want to do things to help their family, they want to be able to help financially if they can, and seeing an opportunity to do so.”

The Department for Education said the government had given councils an extra £4.8 billion ($5.4 billion) to deliver services between now and 2025.

A spokeswoman said, “We are investing more than £1 billion to improve early help services, through a network of family hubs, programmes supporting thousands of families to stay together safely, support with their mental health, and providing healthy food and activities during the school holidays.”

“We are also strengthening the links between social care and education and providing targeted support to keep children most at risk of exploitation engaged in their education,” she added.