INVESTIGATION: DAY 3

ISLANDERS risk the ‘massive sanction’ of a jail term and having their phones seized and destroyed if they use them to import drugs, the police have warned following a huge increase in illegal substances being sent through the post.

In the third part of a JEP investigation, Detective Sergeant Jim McGranahan, of the States police’s Drugs Squad, stressed that social-media apps were not immune from the law and that every order left a trail of digital evidence.

And Customs revealed that following a steady rise in drugs being sent through the mail, they were now seizing an average of £5,500-worth of illegal substances at the postal sorting office each week.

In an exclusive story published this week, the JEP reported that children as young as 15 are exploiting a secret network of social-media channels and online messaging apps to order drugs through the post. The method involves links – which take users directly to an online ‘chat’ where a dealer is selling drugs – being shared between friendship groups on social media before the links, and the posts, are deleted.

The rise in ordering drugs online and having them sent through the post was partly fuelled by the Covid lockdown, which shut down the sea and air links previously exploited by dealers.

But the police and Customs have warned Islanders that the method is not risk-free – and anyone caught importing drugs faced severe consequences.

DS McGranahan said: ‘The unfortunate thing for a lot of these people, whatever they order, is that if they get arrested we are potentially taking their phone, Play- Station, iPad, laptop, every electronic device out of their house.

‘They are potentially never getting that back and when you are losing a £1,200 mobile telephone – because if it’s involved in drug-related activity we ask that the court destroys it – that’s a massive sanction to a lot of kids.’