There has “never been a more dangerous time to be taking drugs” in Britain, according to the National Crime Agency, which said a rise in deaths from synthetic opioids and a surge in global cocaine production was driving an increased threat to life.
Since June last year there have been 284 deaths confirmed from the synthetic opioids nitazenes after a surge in use began last summer.
The director general of the NCA, Graeme Biggar, said in a briefing that the deaths represented a “relatively small proportion of overall drug deaths” but that the significant growth of fatalities from the drugs – and the nature of them – was a cause for concern.
“A lot of the other drug deaths are the accumulated impact of taking drugs over decades … but with nitazenes you can absolutely die the very first time you take it and with nitazenes you very often don’t know you are taking it,” Biggar said.
He added that the risk was that “anyone, a teenager might be taking a drug thinking it is something else, and it’s nitazene. It’s incredibly strong and you die.”
In its annual assessment of the threats from serious and organised crime, the NCA identified drugs as one of several areas where dangers and harm increased last year. Child sexual abuse, cybercrime, money laundering and organised acquisitive crime were also identified as growth areas.
The number of people dying from drug misuse in Britain has increased by 60% over the past decade and tripled over the past 30 years. Biggar said that gave Britain “one of the highest death rates for drugs in Europe” and that the estimated cost to society of the misuse of drugs was £20bn.
The biggest single drug consumed in the UK remains cannabis, and while the vast majority is supplied through industrial-scale cultivation in-country, an increasing amount is being imported by air passengers.
“One thing that has been really striking for us over the last 18 months has been the extent to which people are trying to bring cannabis into the country as air passengers in their own luggage,” Biggar said.
“We have already seized in 2024 more than double the amount of cannabis that we seized in all of 2023 from air passengers as they fly in, and we are seeing people brazenly just having entire suitcases with nothing in them apart from cannabis and that’s something we just didn’t see two or three years ago in the same way.”
On firearms the message was more positive, with close to a record low in deaths, and successes in halting the supply chain of firearms adapted from blanks, meaning the threat was assessed as declining.
Biggar said: “There were 25 people killed by a firearm in the UK last year. That is one of the lowest figures ever.
“Obviously, any single death is a tragedy, and we continue to work as hard as we can to keep pressing down on the firearms threat. But compare us with any other country in Europe, let alone North America, and we have a good record.”
Biggar said the declining threat from firearms was partly due to low societal acceptance of them, as well as successful regulation and law enforcement. “It’s something that still matters to us enormously, of course, but an area that I think as a country we should be quietly proud of.”
There were 25 cases involving the seizure of 3D-printed firearm component parts, or associated items, such as blueprints, during targeted police searches last year. This is an increase on 17 cases in 2022, but still rare.
The NCA also reported that the overall threat level for fraud and organised immigration crime reduced in 2023. However, it cautioned that a recent increase in small boats activity meant the latter was unlikely to remain the case in 2024.
