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