Lack of decent jobs fuels UK drugs trade | Letters
by Letters from on (#4QJEH)
An economy rooted in precarity means county lines will continue to be seen as part of a way out of poverty, writes Nick Moss, while Chris Hughes says the Crown Prosecution Service should target the adults who recruit children to sell drugs
Your editorial on county lines states, rightly, that "there is no point in pretending that there is any quick fix" (Police will not be able to cut off the county lines drug dealers on their own, 17 September). However, all the solutions put forward in relation to the phenomenon - better funding of youth services, placing youth services on a statutory footing etc - evade the fundamental point: this is a business model that works.
For those higher up the chain it is low-risk and lucrative. For users, it makes drugs more easily accessible, more cheaply. For the street dealers, we have to ask whether, in an economy predicated on low-paid, precarious employment, any other option is available that can put 250 a day into their hands.
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