Nickie Aiken, MP for the Cities of London & Westminster, welcomed the Governments strategy to combat county line gangs under the Ten-Year Drugs Plan.
The Plan will break drug supply chains, deliver a world-class treatment and recovery system, and achieve a shift in the demand for recreational drugs.
Nickie was also pleased to receive support from the MP for Vauxhall, Florence Eshalomi who echoed Nickie's comments in the Chamber.
Speaking out in the Chamber, Nickie said,
"Nickie Aiken. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I certainly welcome my Honourable Friends strategy for 10 years, to fight this evil that is the drugs industry in this country. I particularly welcome the emphasis on hopefully holding professional classes to account for their actions.
"You know, they may want to buy their fair trade coffee and go to the farmers market, buy the organic food. But maybe they should spend more time thinking about the cocaine they buy for their weekend parties. Because that fuels county lines and county lines is possibly the worst grooming safeguarding concerns in this country for our young people.
"Does he agree with me that we must treat those involved in county lines, the drug barons involved in county lines, as predators who are using children and grooming children. And perhaps we should look at putting them on the sex offenders register and making sure that they are accountable for their crimes against children."
Responding, Minister for Crime and Policing, Kit Malthouse MP, said,
"Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, I welcome the comments of my Honourable Friend. Obviously, she represents one of the drug epicentres of the country, sadly in central London, and she is quite right. Much of that drug abuse, that violence, that degradation is driven by casual, thoughtless use by people who don't regard themselves as addicted, but nevertheless are complicit in the violence.
"In a White Paper next year, in the spring, we hope to publish a structure of escalating impositions on those individuals, which means there is likely to be a drugs operation outside Lancaster Gates or Bayswater Tube Station or Belgravia, where rather than in other parts of the capital, to make sure we get amongst them.
"And she is quite right that we need to focus very much on those drug barons and put them behind bars if we possibly can."
