According to Police Scotland, two years ago, there were around 50 County Lines drugs, child sex and trafficking, gang groups, based in England, now operating in Scottish towns, from Fraserburgh to Dumfries.

Only Auchinleck/Cumnock seems to have driven them out, when locals rioted against a Bradford-based group and burned their base, last November. See: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2023/11/29/locals-confirm-ayrshire-riots-were-against-british-drug-gangs-who-abused-under-age-girls/

While the local press and the tabloids will be explicit about this curse, BBC Scotland, STV, and the ‘serious’ press will not. The words ‘County Lines’ almost never make it to a headline and rarely appear in the text. That this is a flow exclusively from England into a Scotland, already suffering from high drug deaths, is never made clear. It’s clearly a threat to the concept of Better Together.

Yesterday BBC Tayside & Central headlined:

Two accused of murdering woman in drug plot car chase

Only well down the page, they have:

The conspiracy charge states that the men had “acquired knowledge” of a drug deal to take place at Westway Retail Park in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire. It is said they travelled to the location from the south of England.

‘County Lines’ is once more not mentioned. It is more than 3 years since BBC Scotland’s only reference to this phenomenon despite its prevalence right across the country.

For more on this, see: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/?s=county+lines