Crack trade 'is breeding extraordinary violence'

Crack coccaine is responsible for "quite extraordinary" levels of violence in some of Britain's black communities, a Home Office minister said yesterday.

Addressing a government "crack summit", Bob Ainsworth said turf wars over the lucrative trade in some cities had created a "problem that cannot be ignored". The warning came as government officials, police chiefs and treatment specialists gathered in Birmingham to tackle the spread of the highly-addictive drug.

Some experts attending the event attacked the Government for focusing its attention on one part of the population, and said crack was no longer just an inner-city drug.

Aidan Gray, of the Conference on Crack and Cocaine, said most crack users were white and the drug was increasingly found in suburban and rural areas.

He said: "There are massive changes going on and the spread is right across the board. It's predominantly an urban problem but we are seeing a lot of use in semi-urban areas and also rural areas." Mr Gray said crack users were increasingly making the drug themselves from cocaine powder, rather than buying the more expensive crystals from dealers.

He said the cocaine-derivative was being smoked in Scotland and Plymouth, far away from the so-called Yardie gangs that have been linked to the worst crack turf wars.

Mr Ainsworth told delegates at the conference that he was concerned by the activities of Jamaican gangs which dominate the crack trade at street level in cities such as London and Bristol. Specialist police teams have been set up to combat the problem.

He said: "Everything I have been told from Customs, Operation Trident in London and Operation Atrium in Bristol, would suggest to me that a high proportion of crack cocaine that is manufactured in this country is manufactured from cocaine that has come via Jamaica."

He added: "We need to try and disrupt the gangs that are controlling that supply and are responsible for a large proportion of the conversion into crack. So it is a problem that cannot be ignored."

Mr Ainsworth warned that crack use was spreading outwards from London and said poor communities were most at risk. "The black community does have a problem. The levels of violence within the black community are quite extraordinary." He said that where communities had given information to police, there had been "substantial successes in disrupting the supply and organisations of crack cocaine dealers".

Home Office figures released last month revealed that, compared with 1999, there was an 8 per cent rise is seizures of crack cocaine in 2000. During the same period the courts in England and Wales dealt with a 7 per cent rise in crack-related offences.

The Home Office said the aim of the conference was to bring together communities most at risk from the effects of crack cocaine in a campaign to limit the damage.