If you elect me Nicky Massey for Police and crime commissioner so that I can continue my fight against county line drug dealing that is exploiting our young people today.

County lines is the term for organised drug dealing networks usually controlled by a person with a single telephone number or “deal line”. These groups often prey and exploit on the vulnerable adults and children to move drugs from place to place and to deal the drugs as they are seen as less likely to cause suspicion and removes the likelihood of the organiser from being caught themselves.

County lines has led to an increase in exploitation in our young people particularly who are drawn into drug dealing to fund lifestyle and then can not get themselves out of it without serious and violent implications.

I have worked alongside the local police in tackling County Lines drug dealing, working in partnership to create ‘Operation Carmel’, a force-wide partnership operation to tackle the increasing drug problem in our county. By working together in partnership with schools, county council, social services, housing, district councils the public information can be shared and vulnerable people can be prevented to enter into this very dangerous and growing drug dealing problem our country has.

Operation Carmel is an operation that I am still involved in and am keen to expand even further, working closely with community groups to stamp out problems in your area.

We are seeing an increase in young people carrying and using weapons, in part this is linked to county lines drug dealers who have carried weapon to protect themselves from other drug dealers. Leading to fear and an increase of young people carrying weapons in retaliation.

More needs to be done to highlight the damage weapons do to make it not acceptable for young people to carry knives in any form.

We need to look at the loopholes the criminals are using to get away with using young people.