The P&J and in Aberdeen Live, this story:

Two men have been arrested and charged after a county lines drug bust in Aberdeen. On Monday, June 8, officers from Police Scotland raided a high rise flat block in the Grandholm Court area of the city.

Drugs with an estimated street value of £80,000 were recovered along with almost £4,000 in cash.Two men, aged 26 and 27, have since appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Tuesday, June 9 in connection with the recovery.Detective Constable Nick Bowyers said: “Working alongside other forces, we will continue to target and disrupt those involved in county lines drug supply from England to Aberdeen.“Illegal drugs cause misery in our communities and we will continue to use all available resources to ensure they are removed from our streets and that those involved in drug crime are apprehended.”

https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/two-men-charged-after-police-11006512

How long does this sort of thing have to go back to be justifiably called a plague? Seven years do?

There are now any estimated 600 county lines based in English cities reported operating recently from Shetland to Dumfries and in villages as small as Tarves in Aberdeenshire.

What is the extent of the ‘misery?’

In the Express July 20th 2024, we read:

Knife crime epidemic rising faster in market towns after spread of county lines drug gangs. Knife crime is rising more rapidly in rural counties and market towns than in cities, a study has found. Although most of the police forces in the top 10 included large inner city areas, the study found offences were soaring at an alarming rate outside of urban regions.

According to Police Scotland, there are more than 50 County Lines drug and child-abusing groups active in Scotland, first identified in 2019, commonly in smaller towns where there is no existing local gang strong enough to resist their extreme violence or to compete with their prices. Auchinleck in East Ayrshire seems to be the only case of locals driving them out last November.

They are also more common up the east coast of Scotland, using the railway lines for their underage carriers and in the more deprived areas where their is a reasonably large existing market. In 2019, police raids were being made in Peterhead and in recent months they have raided in places as far north as Wick and as small as Tarves.

While there are no data available for knife crime specifically, a survey of non-sexual crimes of violence from 2018-2022 reveals a similar pattern to that found in England and reinforcing the evidence that County Lines gang activity is fuelling major surges in violence in Scotland’s smaller towns which had previously low levels of such crime.

In Glasgow and surrounding areas – Lanarkshire, Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde – non-sexual crimes of violence have increased but only by less than 10%.

In sharp contrast, the increases in such crime, in smaller towns, on or easily accessed from the main east coast rail lines from England, from 2018-2022, are shocking:

• Borders – 78%
• East Lothian – 47%
• West Lothian – 53%
• Perth & Kinross – 70%
• Fife – 54%
• Angus – 94%
• Aberdeenshire – 71%
• Moray – 96%

BBC Scotland alone refuses to cover this.

Source: https://datamap-scotland.co.uk/category/crime/

Key overlaps include:

• Sexual abuse and grooming: 35% of UK police forces report sexual exploitation in county lines, with an additional 9% noting possible cases; this includes grooming victims with drugs/alcohol, filming assaults for humiliation, and abusing “girlfriends” of gang members. ^{https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/234-county-lines-violen-ce-exploitation-drug-supply-2017}
• Children and young people (as young as 6-7) are at high risk, with overlaps into child sexual exploitation (CSE) reported by 26% of forces. ^{nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk +2}
• Prostitution elements: Gangs force victims into prostitution to settle drug debts (e.g., pimping partners), use sex workers as recruiters or drug couriers, or exploit premises linked to sex work (reported in 33% of forces). ^{https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/234-county-lines-violen-ce-exploitation-drug-supply-2017}
• This can extend to modern slavery, human trafficking, and forcing individuals into sex work as part of broader exploitation. ^{https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/oc_in_local_communities_final.pdf}
• In Scotland, while direct cases are less detailed, police efforts like Operation MARRON target county lines for exploiting vulnerables in drug activities, with awareness of ties to sexual exploitation in prostitution. ^{https://www.gov.scot/publications/trafficking-exploitation-strategy-fifth-progress-report/pages/3/}

These patterns align with broader UK organized crime, where at least half of brothels in some areas (e.g., Bristol) are linked to groups involved in trafficking and sexual exploitation, though not always labelled as county lines. ^{https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/oc_in_local_communities_final.pdf}

Grooming gangs (often with disproportionate Asian ethnic backgrounds in some reviews) have been prosecuted for similar abuses, including in northern England towns with spillover effects, but these are distinct from—but sometimes overlap with—county lines. ^{https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-accessible}

BBC Scotland have not exposed these links to England for the drug gangs, these last 7 or more years, so they were never going to do it for this new plague.