By Afua Hirsch, Social Affairs Editor
Inner-city children as young as 12 are being sent around the country to sell drugs in a phenomenon that is increasingly being recognised as a form of human trafficking.
Speaking exclusively to Sky News, the Home Secretary has spoken of her concern about the practise, known as "running county lines", in which criminal gangs are deliberately exploiting the most vulnerable children to deal class A drugs.
One former gang member told Sky News he made thousands of pounds by sending up to 10 young people a year into a small town where they were sometimes subject to violent attacks and arrest by the police.
"You tend to more ... latch on to someone who can be manipulated, someone who's more controlled, who you can control them more better," said Paco*.
"These kind of individuals, they got their own underlying issues that maybe you don't know about. They got family problems, broken homes, no father, no mother, no money in the house.
"So he wants to be accepted – he thinks, yeah, let me shop drugs for the big guys and I'll be into the gang."
"But that big guy is gonna take advantage of you," Paco added. "I probably went through like 10 workers at least. 'Cos some of them mess up.
"Some of them get arrested. Some just can't handle the pressure. You gotta sack them. Some ... you just go through them like water," Paco added.
The problem is increasingly attracting the attention of the authorities.
Last year the Met Police in conjunction with forces from Kent and Hampshire conducted a series of dawn raids leading to a number of arrests and prosecutions against gang members believed to have been trafficking children to sell Class A drugs.
Home Secretary Theresa May said: "In the past, people have looked at it in terms of human trafficking and assumed it was international trafficking across borders - sexual and labour exploitation.
"But I think what has surprised people is that this is a business that is undertaken by organised criminals in the UK itself.
"There are people - adults and younger people - being moved from different parts of the UK to elsewhere in the UK; into exploitation, into effectively modern slavery.
"It's not just about the trafficking element, the exploitation that is taking place."
One lawyer said she had worked with children as young as 13 who were being exploited by drug dealers after being failed by the local authorities who were supposed to be looking after them.
Deepti Patel, a lawyer from Kids Company, said: "When you have a child that is 13 years old and the only way they are able to look after themselves is by selling drugs on behalf of someone much more sophisticated criminally you have to think about the social failures of protecting those children.
"We had a group of really young children who were sleeping on beaches.
"They were known to the local authority. They had suffered extreme trauma in their homes. They were in care homes and they were absconding."
"It's very similar to the kinds of kids we are seeing in Rochdale and Oxford."
Groups who work with children said they hoped the recognition of "running county lines" as a form of trafficking would lead to victims being protected rather than criminalised themselves.
One victim told Sky News he had worked for gangs as a young person hundreds of miles away from home in fear of both arrest and violence at the hands of addicts.
"I sold Class A, crack heroin. Crackheads can be quite violent sometimes," said Chris*.
"They are kinda being exploited because they don't really have a choice," Chris said. "If they want things to run smoother for them in their community then it's better that they go and do this 'cos it might give them some immunity."
*Some names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.
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