Police are ‘hitting drug dealers where it hurts’

Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said the police were “hitting dealers where it hurts”, after latest figures showed there were more than 27,000 drug seizures in a year.

Official statistics revealed that in 2010-11 there were 27,319 drug seizures – with almost a quarter of these involving class A drugs.

There were 3,484 seizures of heroin, amounting to 95.6kg of the drug. Officers seized cocaine on 2,086 occasions, but there were only 189 seizures of crack.

Cannabis was the most commonly-seized drug, with 10,046 seizures of cannabis resin, 6,777 of herbal cannabis and 970 involving cannabis plants. There were 269 seizures of “ecstasy-type substances”.

Almost half of all seizures – 13,520 – were in the Strathclyde Police area.

The justice secretary said: “These figures today show that police are taking a tough approach and hitting dealers where it hurts.

“I congratulate every officer involved in helping to get these drugs off our streets and encourage them to continue their good work in our communities.”

Deputy Chief Constable Gordon Meldrum, director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said: “Drugs continue to have a devastating impact on the communities of Scotland, and Scottish policing remains relentless in its fight against the drug dealers and the harm that they cause.”

He added: “Drug-dealing continues to be the bread-and-butter business of serious organised crime groups, and disrupting this global business is a top priority for us.”