Taking illegal street drugs is now more dangerous than ever, the head of the National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned, with a surge in the number of deaths linked to high-strength synthetic opioids.
The agency’s director-general Graeme Biggar said the illegal drugs trade remains the biggest single driver of organised crime in the UK—with child sex abuse and the people smuggling of illegal immigrants also posing serious threats.
Outlining the NCA’s annual assessment of crime threats to the UK, Biggar said: “There has never been a more dangerous time to be taking drugs.
“The number of people that have died from the misuse of drugs has increased by 60 percent over the last 10 years and tripled over the last 30 years.
People ‘Don’t Know What They’re Taking’
He told reporters on Thursday that over the last year the NCA had seen the presence of synthetic opioids such as nitazene “surge” in street drugs in the past year.Since June 2023, there have been 284 confirmed deaths linked to nitazene, which is often cooked up in labs as far away as India and China before being smuggled into the UK as a cheap way to increase the strength of other drugs.
“That is a relatively small proportion of overall drug deaths, but it has been growing. It is significant,” Biggar said, adding: “From nitazene, you can absolutely die the very first time you take it, and from nitazene, you very often don’t know you are taking it.
£20 Billion Cost to Society
Biggar said his warning should be heeded by anyone who takes recreational drugs as he highlighted that the NCA estimates the cost to society in the UK from the misuse of drugs is £20 billion each year.He said cannabis remains the “biggest single drug consumed in the UK” as he described how the NCA had noticed a “significant increase” in the last two years of airline passengers trying to bring the drug into the country in their luggage.
Child sexual abuse remains one of the most prevalent serious crimes, with the NCA threat assessment estimating there are between 710,000 and 840,000 UK-based adult offenders who pose a risk to children—equivalent to between 1.3 and 1.6 percent of the adult population.
The NCA’s head of operations Rob Jones said: “Those figures are eye-watering, but they’ve been out there for many years now, and they stack up.”
He drew attention to “high profile individuals, people of public prominence, being arrested and dealt with for this crime. And we can continue to see children being harmed online as a result of it.”
‘Sextortion’ of Children
The NCA has seen changes in the threat to children with the “significance of sextortion”, Jones warned, referring to the crime where abusers will persuade youngsters to send indecent images of themselves and then try to blackmail them.Jones said it is important to have “open conversations” with young people about this kind of coercion, because, “If children feel they can reach out and say, I’ve shared a compromising picture, I’ve shared a compromising chat, the people who are trying to extort them have no power over them whatsoever.”
The NCA repeated concerns that dangerous and illegal migrant Channel crossings are a “persistent and high-volume threat” in the wake of more deaths at sea, with Mr Biggar suggesting an asylum system that works “quickly and effectively” could help deter people from attempting the journey.
“But we cannot tackle the threats from serious and organised crime alone. It’s never been as important to work with our partners and use our networks to tackle the threats globally and locally, to ensure the public understand how serious and organised crime can affect their daily lives and how they can keep themselves safe.”
