Drug Gangs Prepare for blitz on festive rave scene
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Your support makes all the difference.Criminal gangs are creating stockpiles of "rave" drugs ready for a lucrative blitz on the festive party scene, the National Criminal Intelligence Service said today.
Criminal gangs are creating stockpiles of "rave" drugs ready for a lucrative blitz on the festive party scene, the National Criminal Intelligence Service said today.
Ecstasy has been flooding into Britain as criminals try to cash in on the anticipated high demand for the illegal drugs at all-night dance events and street parties.
Customs have seized 325kgs of Ecstasy since October this year compared with 250kgs for the whole of last year amid a worldwide boom for synthetic drugs.
Most of the drugs coming into Britain are from the Netherlands and some Ecstasy pills recovered had an M for millennium or 2000 logo.
British-born gangsters are increasingly setting up their own laboratories to produce Ecstasy, amphetamines and GHB.
GHB is one of four to six drugs which have been used in drug-assisted rapes and used to be sold over the counter in sex shops.
But that trade has been brought under control and the manufacture of GHB, known also as Liquid Ecstasy and Grievous Bodily Harm, is increasingly being manufactured and supplied for £10 a bottle through traditional criminal networks.
Drug-making factories can be set up for a few hundred pounds in a kitchen but some criminals are spending up to £100,000 for state-of-the-art labs to get the highest yield from production methods.
The huge profits meant that in one case, a gang recruited a qualified chemist and paid him £10,000 every day he worked in a kitchen laboratory, NCIS said.
In the last year, eight illicit drug factories were discovered and 39 people arrested.
British criminals are expected to get more deeply involved in the trade with violence between rivals on the rise because of the potentially huge profits.
They are also moving towards getting more chemical ingredients from China and the former Eastern bloc where bombings and assassinations have been part of the struggle for control.
Nick Wilson, head of the organisation's drugs section, said: "NCIS is aware of the great diversification of the drugs market in recent years, and the millennium offers what may be viewed as the perfect opportunity for widening that market further.
"The festive season, with its emphasis on extended partying, has created an unprecedented demand for dangerous drugs, a demand that organised crime is only too happy to meet."
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