BOLTON drug dealers are targeting children as young as eight and using radio scanners to avoid arrest. People from the Great Lever area complained at a police and community liaison meeting that drug dealers operating from local houses were making their lives a misery. "We are living in trapped conditions and we can't sell our houses," one resident said. "I believe we should have a priority over a lot of other areas that don't get the hassle we get."

Several people complained that some dealers were using scanners to listen to police radios and avoid being caught.

Supt Ian McLoughlin said he was aware that criminals sometimes listened in to police frequencies. And he said that although police have encrypted radios to foil eavesdroppers, they were very expensive and only a limited number were available. He said police were tackling drug dealing and last year there were 115 arrests for drug trafficking, 250 for drug possession and 60 for connected offences. Drugs seized included heroin worth an estimated £285,000.

He added that police too were horrified by the spread of drugs and in one recent instance an eight-year-old boy was offered cannabis.

Cllr Margaret Clare added: "I have discovered by experience that this is the worst area for drugs.

"We as an authority are desperately trying to tackle the problem." She said Bolton Council would evict convicted drug dealers from council properties.

But she added that she was frustrated when often cases did not go to court through lack of evidence.

Supt McLoughlin said police take drug dealing very seriously, but stressed that it was a problem not just confined to Bolton and people needed to come forward with evidence to help get convictions.

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