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'High salaries and little risk' for UK's £8billion drug barons
Last updated at 00:22am on 21.11.07The illegal drugs trade in Britain is worth a staggering £8billion a year and involves 70,000 street dealers, secret Home Office research revealed yesterday.
Major importers stand to earn more than £16,000 every day and run their operations like a business. Some even have a list of salaried employees.
The drug barons have little fear of being caught and view jail as nothing more than an "occupational hazard", the study reveals.
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Opposition MPs said the findings - slipped out yesterday in a blizzard of Government research papers - are a damning indictment of Labour's ten-year drugs strategy.
The study concedes there remains a "high and stable demand for illegal drugs".
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, said: "It is extraordinary that drugs are cheaper and more available yet more lucrative than any other crime under this Government.
"Since drugs breed other crimes, including murder, this figure amounts to a disgraceful condemnation of a central plank of this Government's anti-drugs policy."
The report reveals how the Government has been sitting on unpublished research on the total value of the illegal drugs market. It was finally published yesterday as part of a wider study. It shows a turnover of £7billion to £8billion each year - three times the profits of Tesco.
It involves 300 major importers of drugs, 3,000 "wholesalers", and 70,000 street dealers.
The report says the mark-ups - or profit - as the drug is passed along the supply chain are huge, standing at 15,800 per cent for cocaine and 16,800 per cent for heroin.
A fifth of dealers operate alone, with the remainder being run as "small or medium-sized enterprises". Some even have "salaried staff", the report says.
It gives the example of one Mr Big who, along with a partner based in Spain, imported and distributed 50 to 60 kilogrammes (110lb to 132lb) of cocaine each week.
The profits, after salaries and expenses, were £16,390 each every day.
Large numbers of dealers had legitimate careers before turningto a life of crime, including some successful businessmen.
They viewed prison either as an occupational hazard or an unlikely risk. Asset recovery - when the profits of crime are seized by the courts - was more troubling for dealers.
Most individuals enter drugdealing through their family or friends. This suggests that drug-dealing spreads "contagiously" from dealer to new dealer. Dealers even carry out detailed research of local markets in order to make the maximum amount of money.
One convicted criminal, interviewed by researchers, said: "If you want to see what the market is like, go look at the street corners where heroin is sold.
"If each street corner has a dealer on it, you know there is enough heroin about. If there aren't any dealers about, then you know there is a shortage and you can push the price of the kilos up."
Dealers forge relationships inside prison, where they meet other inmates they can "trust". Serving time in jail is viewed by criminals as a sign a dealer is "trustworthy".
