Someone has posted a tiny bag of white powder through our letterbox!

[UmmWTF]

Me and DH are freaking out a bit. At about 10pm we heard the letterbox go while we were watching TV but didn't immediately check it. We've just got up to head to bed and it's a tiny little ziplock bag (like 50p sized tiny) with white lumpy powder in it

We're going to have to call 111 in the morning arent we? Really freaked and going to struggle to sleep now!

What the actual fuck

Hi @PricklesAndSpikes I'm so embarrassed as my signal is awful where i am now and it didn't load the pages and kept banging out so i didn't see the responses. I took forever to post as well due to it getting stuck

There is a huge amount of county lines activity in affluent areas, with children from these areas often doing the running. The lack of knowledge about this model is shocking.

It's probably been delivered by a 14 year old who has been forced to stash it up his bum, sanitise your hands thoroughly!

@UnityUnited

The county lines point is a good one. Chances are mumsnetters children aren’t the ones being groomed to deliver drugs. Chances of it being posted by a kid on a bike who is locked into a world they can’t escape from are pretty high.

Not where I live in the suburbs. It's mostly young lads in their 20's with the very odd girl here and there - usually a girlfriend of the twenty something lad.

@UnityUnited

All types of people love drugs. The point is some people are oblivious to how their drugs are produced and distributed. It’s a vile ‘industry’.

Because it's illegal ...that's why it's vile I'm not saying drugs aren't bad, they are very powerful and can lead to very bad outcomes however the desire for pleasurable intoxication is part of the human condition, I think it would be better if we recognised this and regulated intoxicating substances instead of only allowing one very harmful one (alcohol) and making all the rest illegal

@Postnasaldrop

What kind of neighbourhood do you live in? Naice or a little bit rough?

I'm not sure who that was addressed to. My neighbourhood generally is mixed although the end if the cul de sac where I live is mainly teachers and nhs. I was talking about my friends earlier not people in my area generally.

@UnityUnited

Absolutely JoeBlack Have you considered the demographic on mumsnet? Very middle-class. Not the usual type of children dealers target. Not vulnerable enough.

The Telegraph Middle class children used to traffic drugs by 'county lines' gangs, warns Children's Commissioner

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/05/07/middle-class-children-used-traffic-drugs-county-lines-gangs/

I don’t doubt that children in affluent areas can be used by organised crime gangs. As I said in an earlier post, they are prized. Also, middle-class children can have dysfunctional lives and be vulnerable. My broader point was to the people who are relaxed about drugs. Vulnerable kids, whatever their class will probably be involved somewhere in the chain of command. The point I made was about Mumsnetters, regardless of their class. I have always felt the posters on here are very engaged with their children. I don’t see post after post from parents worried about funding burner phones or their children going missing for days and turning up in other towns etc. Maybe I am wrong though.

@EBearhug

It's been an educational thread. I had to look up diatomaceous earth. Haven't knowingly heard of it before (which seems unlikely, given some of its uses.)

It's an organic (and ineffective) remedy for fleas, which is how I knew about it. I tried it when we had three cats, six dogs and a massive flea population.

If the Telegraph article is for my benefit, please note I have said m-c children can be targeted. They can be vulnerable or made vulnerable by these gangs. It is a complicated issue and I accept I am probably not doing it justice until my posts. There are many other articles and studies which look towards children in care who are targeted.

@Oblomov20

Middle class children don't do drugs. You are so fxxking naieve. Many of them have tried it, once at parties. Many do not, totally non interested. Most of ds1's , very ordinary school down the road, friends are naice, many parents are incredibly well off. Famous parents a couple of them. MAny of these kids have tried something once.

Did someone actually say middle class kids don’t do drugs? Seriously? That must be why rehab places like The Priory do such a roaring trade, it’s all the kids from wealthy working class families keeping them going.

@UnityUnited

Absolutely JoeBlack Have you considered the demographic on mumsnet? Very middle-class. Not the usual type of children dealers target. Not vulnerable enough.

There was a piece in Radio 4 this morning about middle class kids, whose parent are high earners and thus spend long hours working, being targeted for county lines.

@LightDrizzle

It’s the hypocrisy around middle class drug taking that really pisses me off. Lots of the households doing a few lines at the weekend will be fair trade buying, culturally engaged, educated people who decry uncontrolled capitalism and think of themselves as people who make conscious decisions for the planet and for the disadvantaged. Then they fund and perpetuate a grotesque, criminal chain built on exploitation, intimidation and violence that snakes back through so many hands to the country of origin, causing damage everywhere it touches. From the people whose houses are burgled and trashed to fund the addiction of the socioeconomically less insulated; the poor women who die when the condoms they’ve swallowed burst; to the communities caught in the violence of towns run by rival drug cartels with insane mortality rates for their sons and daughters, where torture, rape and mutilation are routine instruments of control. Just buy fucking Nescafé, drive a Hummer and keep pet Tigers or whatever. Oh but of course that is visible and visibly unacceptable, and so not you. You recycle and read the Guardian!

Could not agree more.

I also agree with the point that our policy on drugs makes no sense. Alcohol is one of the most harmful by any measure but we make it available to all adults, choosing to tax it heavily and regulate the manufacture, distribution and sale. Cigarettes, ditto. Why don't we do this for other drugs? Ringfence the tax take for health education, NHS addiction services and expanding trading and environmental standards to police the whole thing. Huge savings in cost of policing, criminal justice system, prisons. Massive blow to organised crime, so knock on effects on other criminal activities too.

If it was my house I would probably sit it somewhere out of reach of children/animals and see if anyone knocked for it. Round my way no doubt people would be this brazen.

Regarding the children spoken about on R4, I would say they are neglected and therefore vulnerable.

@UnityUnited

Regarding the children spoken about on R4, I would say they are neglected and therefore vulnerable.

They’re still middle class.

@Dundundunnn
You and your dd will definitely know people who take coke regularly, they just haven't told you.

How very sad that so many people dislike themselves and their lives so much that they need a chemical crutch to get through the day.

Also very sad that people who don't do drugs (or alcohol) so often feel the need to apologise by labelling themselves as "boring" or "unadventurous". There's nothing boring about having the strength and confidence to navigate life without pumping yourself full of toxins.

Middle class people do drugs, indeed a middle class cabinet minister did in his early adult life (Michael Gove).

@UmmWTF

DH is concerned that if they realise its the wrong address they'll come and ask for it back...

I doubt very much they’d ask for it back

Drug dealers tend to lay low. They wouldn’t want to pop to a door they don’t know. You could be police for all they know. And ask for their wrongly posted drugs back.

What is bloody tragic, U.K. never had a drugs problem til we changed legal prescription for heroin and cocaine for addicts in the late 1960’s.
It was all prescribed to mainly middle class addicts.
Then a lot of Canadians came over and Lady Frankau over prescribed to a negligent degree.

Methadone and no cocaine became the state line, and the black market willingly took up the slack.

Bing Spear from the Home Office, back when addicts were “ Notified” to home office predicted a huge surge in criminal activity once drug prescribing was curtailed.
NHS cocaine would probably have been ethically produced, just as now poppy crops are for NHS painkillers.
We even grow P. Somniferum in U.K. for NHS opiates.

Illegality always causes terrible issues

It’s the hypocrisy around middle class drug taking that really pisses me off. Lots of the households doing a few lines at the weekend will be fair trade buying, culturally engaged, educated people who decry uncontrolled capitalism and think of themselves as people who make conscious decisions for the planet and for the disadvantaged.
Then they fund and perpetuate a grotesque, criminal chain built on exploitation, intimidation and violence that snakes back through so many hands to the country of origin, causing damage everywhere it touches.

This. The hypocrisy.

Illegality always causes terrible issues

Yes, Prohibition in the US was an excellent illustration of that.

Glad you sorted it out, hope you don’t get anymore!