County Lines Drug Trafficking

County lines drug trafficking is a United Kingdom drug supply model in which criminal gangs based in major cities transport drugs into rural areas and smaller towns and run the local sale through exploited young people rather than their own members. Gangs recruit and exploit vulnerable children, including some already in pupil referral units or excluded from mainstream school, coercing them into dealing drugs, and some are drawn in through debt bondage after running up drug debts of their own, with much of this activity recognized as a form of modern slavery. The term itself refers to the dedicated phone numbers, called deal lines, used to run drug orders across police and local authority boundaries, and those involved in the trade use their own slang for participating in it, describing the practice as going country, or cunch, and going OT, meaning out there.