Signal Drug harms costing UK society over 20 billion pounds a year

Summary

The report states that many people are involved in drug-related activity and that drug use, seizures and offences in the UK are all still rising. Drawing on the National Crime Agency's 2025 National Strategic Assessment, it puts the resulting cost to society at more than twenty billion pounds each year. The harm also falls directly on people, with drug-related deaths in England and Wales at their highest since records began in 1993. In the short term, the report expects climate events, global economic crises and protracted conflict to disrupt the supply of plant-based drugs and possibly boost synthetic drug production and trafficking. It stresses that cutting drug and firearms offences would make society safer by reducing the exploitation of vulnerable people by organised crime.