I’m grateful to rtpscot for alerting me to this.
BBC Scotland has never mentioned that the illegal cheap drug business in Scotland’s towns and villages and by association out drug deaths, is now utterly dominated by County Lines gangs based in England. They have only once used the County Lines names in one headline back in 2021 and, to my knowledge, only once referred to the source cities once in 2019.
In 2017, BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands, when the label was less familiar, had:
A Highlands woman has been described as a “central figure” in a gang’s distribution of heroin and cocaine in the Inverness and Elgin areas.
Elizabeth Nash, 37, of Kirkhill, near Inverness, has been jailed at the High Court in Livingston for three years and four months.
She pleaded guilty to distributing class A drugs between 16 November 2016 and 5 January this year.
Judge Lord Burns said she was “central” to an illegal drugs operation.
Three men from Liverpool have also been jailed for their parts in supplying drugs from England to Inverness, Elgin and surrounding areas.
Lord Burns told Nash: “You were a central figure, you received substantial sums of money, operated bank accounts and acted as a runner handing out drugs.
“You persisted in being part of the chain after being released from custody.
“I have concluded that the public interest requires a custodial sentence. You were deeply involved in this scheme for a prolonged period.”
Terence Hodson, 32, was jailed for four years and nine months, Joseph Waters, 20, for three years nine months and Thomas McKay, 31, was sentenced to three years after admitting to charges of supplying drugs.
The four were arrested as part of a police surveillance campaign called Operation Dorena which targeted dealers in the north west of England sending drugs to Scotland.
In 2017, not only was ‘County Lines’ a new concept but was ‘cuckooing’ – when drug gangs take over the home of a vulnerable person through violence and intimidation, using it as their base for selling/manufacturing drugs.
I can’t help but wondering whether the judge misread Elizabeth Nash, condemning her as a partner rather than a victim in terror of refusing to work for the gang. According to the Inverness Courier, in 2012, she had been seriously assaulted by here ‘ex-con’ partner.
England mentioned TWICE! Did the Inverness office not get the memo?
On the same day, the Herald reported this story as:
Gang who flooded Highlands with Class-A drugs are jailed
Flooded – might that have further exacerbated Scotland’s high drug death rate?
Drug deaths in Highland have continued to climb, despite a national decline, from 33 in 2020 to 42 in 2022.
Surge in violent crime?
Elgin in Moray – from 90 cases in 2018 to 176 in 2022, a 96% increase.
Inverness in Highland – from 88 cases in 2018 to 326 in 2022, a 270% increase.
Consider the contrast with large urban areas such as Glasgow which only saw a 6% increase in crimes of violence [1 563 to 1 651] to illustrate the appalling consequences of the County Lines gang penetration of small town Scotland.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
So has the uk government a policy of encouraging english drug gangs or at least giving them a free pass to distribute drugs in scotland to undermine our society. I see this as the only reason for this combined policy if silence
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