What lockdown? It’s business as usual for drug traffickers

On Tuesday this week border control cops stopped a van with a shipment of face masks coming through the Channel Tunnel. When they checked the masks they found almost £1 million worth of cocaine tucked in among them. It was a similar story a week earlier. A man called Benjamin Evans was pulled over by the Welsh police on the A40 Brecon bypass. Evans claimed he was a key worker but when the cops searched his car, they discovered nearly £60,000 worth of cocaine. ‘Possession of drugs with intent to supply does not qualify as essential work,’ said the arresting officer. There have been reports recently of a fall in the demand for ‘party drugs’ like cocaine, and of course lockdown has meant a few glitches in the usual supply chains — speed bumps, let’s call them — but the lesson of the face mask shipment and Evans the key worker is that by and large the drug trade remains remarkably unbothered by the Covid crisis.