The Safe haven Market town Ravaged by Drug underworld where ‘Farmers’ make £30k a batch & Addicts moan ‘this isn’t life’

NERVOUSLY shifting his gaze left to right, Tom pulls his hood further down across his face.

Having grown and sold his own cannabis, the self-confessed drug dealer admits he’s since progressed to the harder stuff – and is now completely hooked.

“It was always weed, up until six months ago,” he tells The Sun.

“A friend was using crack cocaine, and I tried some. I’d never done it before, but I was hooked. 

“This is not what I want for my life, but I’m addicted so I keep doing it. I know it could be laced with anything, like fentanyl, but when I do it, I don’t think about anything else; I just want to get high.”

It sounds like a typically tragic tale from a big city, but this is Callington – a tiny market town in Cornwall with a population of just under 6,000 people.

Home to the infamous Ginsters pasties, it was once considered one of the safest places to live in the UK – but in recent years stories of drug-dealing, county lines gangs, anti-social behaviour, armed police raids and even murder have cast a dark shadow over the historical civil parish.

Ten years ago Callington’s almost non-existent crime rate meant its police station was an easy choice when budget cuts spelled the closure of many smaller units.

The old police station was closed and cops are now based at Gunnislake Woodland Centre.

In the last two years alone, Callington’s crime rate has increased from 32 in July 2023, to 60 in July this year.

Andrew Hatrey, 38, and Kristian Humphries, 31, arrived in two cars with an assortment of weapons and intended to cause Hill serious harm rather than killing him.

Hatrey was jailed for 26 years while Humphries was sentenced to 15 years.

Drugs are a prominent issue.

In July, three members of the same family from Callington were found to be running a “significant criminal enterprise” involving laundering just shy of £1million for a drug dealer, using their legitimate photocopy and printer cartridge business as a front.

Aliki Mamwa, originally from north London, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in December 2018 for masterminding the transportation of crack cocaine and heroin to Cornwall from London

Suspected drugs and cash seized during police raids in Callington