Drug smugglers are flying scientists into the UK to extract cocaine that has been chemically bonded onto other substances to evade customs checks, the National Crime Agency (NCA) warned today.
Investigators have found traffickers are using sophisticated scientific methods to bond drugs to materials as diverse as charcoal, cardboard boxes, plastic or glue.
Sometimes chemists will combine drugs including cocaine and artificial opioids with carrier materials in South America before flying to the UK to extract them at the other end.
Drugs that have been chemically bonded onto other substances can often not be picked up by scanners and sniffer dogs.
‘While we need to respond to a range of new challenges, we cannot take our eyes off the drug threat,’ NCA director general Graeme Biggar said. ‘It has always caused a lot of harm, it is evolving fast, and we need to stay on top of it.’
Mr Biggar warned of the wider threat posed by the drug trade, which he said was now responsible for half of homicides, thefts and robberies.
He said nitazenes, a form of synthetic opioid, now pose the biggest risk in the fight against illegal drugs, with one type being linked to 1,000 UK deaths in two-and-a-half years.
A cocaine haul worth £100million that was seized at London Gateway port last year
Last year, British police helped to seize a record nine-tonne haul of cocaine from a ‘narco-sub’ off the Azores
Unveiling the NCA’s annual National Strategic Assessment, Mr Biggar called the number of deaths ‘extraordinary’.
‘Synthetic opioids pose the biggest risk. Since nitazenes first appeared at scale in the UK in June 2023, they have been connected to 1,000 deaths. This is an extraordinary figure,’ he said.
The number of deaths decreased slightly in 2025 as UK law enforcement battles to avoid the situation that has been seen in North America, where deaths have surged.
Part of the decrease is the wider availability of naloxone, which is used to treat overdoses.
Mr Biggar focused on drugs, organised immigration crime, and crime online in a speech at the NCA’s new headquarters in Stratford, east London.
Investigators have seen heroin being cut with synthetic opioids, making it more dangerous, and also an increase in ketamine use.
The number of adults needing medical treatment after using the drug has increased tenfold in 10 years, while the number of under-18s has tripled in three years.
The threat from organised crime grew last year as technology allows criminals to ‘get smarter, faster and more connected, to each other and to victims’, Mr Biggar said, and developments in technology are ‘reshaping crime itself’.
Dylan Rocha, 21, a promising musician, died after overdosing on heroin that is believed to have been mixed with nitazenes
Recent cyber attacks on Transport for London, the Legal Aid Agency, Marks and Spencer, the Co-op, Kido Nurseries and Jaguar Land Rover have shown that it is not enough for businesses to secure their systems, but they also need to address how staff can be manipulated, he told audience members.
The number of referrals from technology companies reporting child abuse rose to 2,000 per week this year, with 92,000 received in 2025, up nearly a third in two years.
Mr Biggar warned that ‘toxic online spaces’ were radicalising teenagers to become cyber criminals, sex offenders and terrorists.
‘Technology is no longer simply a tool that criminals use. It is reshaping crime itself: accelerating it, globalising it, and making it more harmful,’ he said.
‘Teenagers are being radicalised – to become cyber criminals, sexual offenders or terrorists – within the same toxic online spaces, by the same algorithms.’
Turning to illegal migration, Mr Biggar said the conflict in Iran is likely to increase the number of people trying to enter Britain.
In 2025 the Horn of Africa was the main source of migrants, replacing Vietnam and Albania.
Under plans announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the NCA is being combined with several other national bodies to form the National Police Service.
Crime and Policing Minister Sarah Jones said: ‘Across the country, officers are confronting some of the most complex and global threats we have ever faced.
‘That is why we’re setting up the National Police Service and delivering the largest reform to policing in over 200 years. We will bring the very best of our specialist teams together with one mission to protect the public. Frontline officers will get the backing they need to tackle the epidemic of every day crime.’