‘Thank you, Chief Superintendent. Every ACPO meeting I have been to in the last year has been, to a great extent, about county lines, their growth, their spread and the threat they pose to every aspect of life in the communities we police. They are a particular threat to our young people, on a par but becoming more widespread than paedophile rings and grooming gangs. And when I say young, I mean they target not just teenagers, but children – we know instances of children as young as nine being recruited to collect and deliver drugs. They are cleverly bribed with gifts – new phones, tablets, bicycles, designer trainers and other gear. Young kids are susceptible, of course they are, and these are generally children from poorer families, deprived kids, kids without all the treats they know others get. It’s for the sake of these children that we have to make county lines our main focus from now and going forward. We want drugs off the streets, out of circulation – drugs destroy lives. It’s as simple as that. Kids start by being messengers, seems harmless enough, but then they’re tempted to try drugs themselves – nothing too strong, just a bit of weed to start with, and if they’ve got a bad home life, where they’re knocked about or bullied or the parents have split or one is in prison, then a spliff takes the edge off the misery. And so it starts, and maybe the kid gets further into more serious crime, because by now he or she has a habit and the habit has to be fed. Not every kid they use comes from a bad background. Some of what you’d call nice middle-class parents find out they have a child who’s a drugs mule – where did the shiny new watch come from? Who bought the gold pendant? The Xbox and the expensive games? It spreads, the bad parents don’t care, and their kids know that – but someone out there loves them enough to buy them nice gear. Of course, the well-off recreational drug users, people in top jobs, who think a spliff to relax with, a line of coke after a dinner party or at a social function helps to make things go with a swing, don’t care. They’ll argue that drugs are no worse than alcohol, and often a lot less harmful, in the right hands – which of course are their hands. But none of these people trace the drugs they’ve bought back to the criminals, the youth gangs, and so on down to the exploited kids.