Level 2 markets

The supply and trafficking of drugs between those who import drugs and those who sell them to users on the street is an elastic and dynamic market place. Dealers can convey or deal in large quantities and sell on between importers and local wholesalers who are themselves above street level, or they can operate barely above street level. Dealers can be importers and street dealers. They may also be multi-commodity dealers including non-drugs, such as people, guns or tobacco.

Some cocaine importers routinely also act by selling the drugs themselves. They arrange couriers to bring the drugs into the UK; and they organise the conversion of that cocaine into crack and selling it on in the UK. They operate at all three Levels of the market. They tend not to deal in other drugs.

Most heroin dealers are not involved in the supply chain in the same way. The market is more stratified; there are Level 3 traffickers who import drugs, but they normally then sell these on to regional distributors who work within the UK. They then sell on perhaps to smaller area wholesalers, some of whom will sell directly to users, but often then to street dealers to distribute.