44 years for supplying cutting agents which made drug dealers billions
22 November 2011
Updated 24 November 2011
Three men who conspired to supply the illegal drugs trade with tonnes of chemicals used as cutting agents have been sentenced to 44 years following an extensive operation by SOCA. If these chemicals were mixed at a ratio of 1:1 with class A drugs – a dilution typical at the very top of the supply chain – the street value of the resultant powders would be more than £3.5billion.
Between September 2005 and July 2008, Jamie Dale, assisted by John Cawley and Barry Hartley, imported and supplied almost 36 tonnes of cutting agents. A number of these shipments were marked or tracked by SOCA – a tactic employed to both prove who the group were selling to and to enable police to arrest the drug dealers buying the cutting agents.
The investigation identified 21 seizures where chemicals supplied by Dale’s organisation were recovered in circumstances consistent with illegal drug distribution, many as a direct result of intelligence provided by tracking the chemicals supplied by Dale. The seizures spanned the breadth of the UK from Bristol to Rotherham, Edinburgh to Bournemouth.
On Thursday November 24th, Jamie Dale was sentenced to 18 years. John Cawley and Barry Hartley were sentenced to 15 years and 11 years respectively.
Senior investigating officer John Wright commented: “These substantial sentences are for conspiracy to supply class A drugs though the men were dealing in cutting agents. As far as SOCA is concerned, knowingly selling such chemicals to drug dealers makes you as guilty as the dealers themselves.
“The trade in cutting agents is a major enabler of criminal activity, generating huge profits for drug dealers and making class A drugs cheaper and more available at street level. Without criminals such as Jamie Dale, cocaine would cost users four or five times as much, making it prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of the country, and consequently far less accessible.”
Alun Milford, Head of Organised Crime Division at the CPS, said: “This prosecution was based almost entirely on the wholesale supply of cutting agent chemicals which were intended to be cut with class A drugs, thereby increasing the volume and the street value up to a staggering estimated value of £3.5 billion.
"The three defendants were found guilty of offences of conspiring to supply Class A controlled drugs - cocaine and diamorphine - and a Class B drug, amphetamine; this was the first time such charges were applied to activities involving such large amounts of cutting agents."
The chemicals supplied by Dale include benzocaine, lidocaine and procaine, which are commonly used to cut cocaine and which are also mixed with amphetamine and heroin. There were also large importations of paracetamol and caffeine which are both common cutting agents for heroin. During the three years of the investigation, Dale and his associates imported 20% of the global demand for benzocaine. This is the most commonly used cutting agent for cocaine once it has arrived in the UK.