We live in a small town in Kent, not much happens here. Drugs are everywhere in the country obviously but the area never particularly stuck out for that. It's gorgeous and very quiet. My teenagers (DS 16 DD 14) both go to the local secondary school, and it's fine. They have friends who they meet with in town etc.
DS recently told me that there's a lot of kids from inner London who some of the kids from his group have started hanging around with. The town is quite awkward for them to get to as it doesn't have a train station, so they have to get to our town from the train station in a big town, which takes quite a while. He says it really picked up during the Summer holidays. Apparently they've been coming and selling weed etc and then going home, but are trying to get friendly with certain members of the group. Apparently taking people for takeaways and stuff. DS says he has been added on Snapchat by some of them but he has blocked them as it all feels off to him. They have been sending people messages apparently advertising the fact that they'll have cocaine to sell soon. DS says his friendship group has really been taken in by this group but he doesn't want anything to do with it (we've had bad experiences with drugs in the extended family), so he doesn't know what to do. Why is this happening?
There has been quite a bit more youth violence here in recent months, Dsis works in an A&E in another part of Kent and says she is seeing a
lot more knife wounds etc (stuff that isn't even being reported in the news!) and teenagers who just won't talk. I am starting to feel very frightened for our kids. It's like they are all involved in a completely different world which we are not able to comprehend 