Drug importers face 'low risks', admit police

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Inside the global drugs industry

Sixty-five tonnes of heroin and cocaine found its way on to the nation's streets in the past 12 months, with barely 7 per cent of illegal shipments being intercepted, a government report discloses on Thursday.

The annual assessment of the threat of organised crime shows that Britain is awash with drugs, and provides the clearest indication so far of the dangers posed by traffickers. An estimated 30 tonnes of heroin and 40 tonnes of cocaine – the two drugs identified by the Government as the most damaging to society – are being imported annually.

The report, by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), says Customs and the police are only seizing 2 tonnes of heroin and less than 3 tonnes of cocaine a year – about 7 per cent of the total imported.

The report, The United Kingdom Threat Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2001, states: "The amounts of drugs seized, compared to the amounts trafficked, suggest the risks for those involved are low ... there is every likelihood that more [organised crime] groups will join in this activity, and that organised crime's sphere of influence and overall impact will grow as a result."

The survey notes that "UK prices of certain drugs have dropped substantially" and that the average wholesale price of a kilo of heroin reached "an all-time low" of £13,000 this year.

Although in Afghanistan the ruling Taliban appear to have brought an end to the cultivation of opium in the country, "sufficient stockpiles exist to maintain supply", and alternative sources for heroin are emerging in Burma, the central Asian republics, and Africa.

The report states that Turkish criminal groups – some of them based in Belgium and the Netherlands – continue to dominate the UK heroin market. Pakistani smugglers have been found to be bringing in quantities of heroin by air courier, and worrying evidence is revealed that so-called Yardie gangsters are "actively engaged in the supply of heroin at street level".

The Yardie gangs have been linked to a bloody turf war over crack cocaine dealing in London, which has led to 33 deaths between 1999 and 2000.

The NCIS survey paints a similarly alarming picture of the cocaine market, which according to the departing drugs tsar, Keith Hellawell, is growing at a worrying rate. Risks to cocaine traffickers are "relatively low" and there is likely to be an emergence of more large-scale British importers who bypass the Colombian and Jamaican connections to deal with wholesalers based in mainland Europe.

The assessment says that Britons are consuming ecstasy tablets at the rate of 100 million a year and that traffickers will continue to import synthetic drugs from Holland, which "has established itself at the centre of Europe's drug trade".

The report underlines the importance of the drugs trade in financing other areas of serious crime. More than half of organised crime groups involved in smuggling people across borders are also involved in drug trafficking.

Almost all gangs involved in the organised smuggling of small arms are established in the drug trade. The report notes: "The use of guns by drug traffickers to show strength, to threaten, to wound and kill, suggests that, for many, small arms trafficking is a supporting activity."

The report warns of the widespread availability of replica firearms, described as an industry worth £9.8m a year. It says replica guns were used in 823 offences last year.