County lines gangs recruit vulnerable young people, including teenagers, to travel to provincial towns to sell their drugs. New form of distributionAccording to Europol’s 2019 Drug Markets Report, county-lines-style drug distribution is now a feature of the Irish drug trade. This ties into another worrying Irish trend noted by Europol: the scale and severity of drug debt intimidation. Local gardaí and community activists have long tried to highlight the scale of the problem of intimidation and threats by drug gangs seeking to enforce debts. Three-tier structureAccording to Europol, Irish drug gangs have a three-tier structure.

Source: The Irish Times November 27, 2019 00:56 UTC