CRIMINAL gangs in Gwent are using vapes to target schoolchildren and recruit them for selling drugs.
Gangs and organised crime groups are believed to be providing youngsters with vapes to sell in school, and rewarding them with cash and expensive trainers, as a first step to selling drugs.
Some children have even broken down doors in schools to snatch back confiscated vapes, which those working with young people believe could be due to fear of retribution from older gangs.
Catherine Jones, who works with young people involved in anti-social behaviour across Torfaen, outlined the risks posed from the networks behind the sale of vapes in local schools to councillors.
She said: “We’ve seen in Torfaen, and nationwide, young people used by criminal gangs, or groups of criminals, to sell vapes in schools. They hope to start them off selling vapes and will provide them with money or new trainers and will eventually get them to start selling drugs and there have been local incidents in Gwent.
“Young people are exploited. Vapes are used as the carrot, it’s ‘just sell this for me in school’ and they then get further and further into it.”
Ms Jones, who is the community safety lead for Torfaen Borough Council, said the Torfaen Community Safety Partnership, known as Safer Torfaen, considers addressing anti-social behaviour as key to preventing young people becoming at risk of involvement in crime.
Safer Torfaen is made up of the council, Gwent Police, probation, the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service and the area’s Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and for the past 12 months has identified anti-social behaviour, vaping and links with organised crime, and a reduction of serious violence in schools at its priorities.
Ms Jones described anti-social behaviour as “the golden thread” linking risks to children and young people of involvement in crime.
She told councillors: “We’ve seen in some schools where young people are selling vapes when they’ve been confiscated by teachers they have broken down doors to try and get those vapes back or they’ve been hiding them in ceilings or toilets so it is also causing criminal damage. We don’t know if that’s fear of ‘if I don’t sell these vapes what are these older gangs going to do to me?’ or they could have a nicotine addiction.”
Inspector Lee Stachow, of Gwent Police, told councillors, he “one hundred per cent” agreed with the situation as outlined by Ms Jones.
He said: “Lots of vulnerable young people are using vapes and they tend to get them from people who are really more serious criminals or organised criminal groups.”
The inspector added: “The quantity of vapes seized locally clearly shows that link to organised crime, we’re talking about a phenomenal amount and phenomenal money.
“We want to stop those young people buying vapes and those people asking them ‘do you want to sell drugs?’ That is the chain we are trying to break.”