A Russian messaging app has swiftly shut down a “dial a drug” racket exposed by the Daily Record.
We revealed yesterday how Telegram, owned by tech tycoon Pavel Durov, had been used by dealers in Scotland to flog heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, high-strength cannabis and prescription pills.
They tried to hide their trade behind the app’s end-to-end encryption – but we unearthed a chat group called weed/coke/420/pills/lsd/glasgow/uk that included price lists and pictures of the drugs available.
The Scottish drug selling group had more than 14,700 members.
Telegram chiefs closed down the dealer channel within hours of our story being published.
Former Glasgow MP and drugs campaigner Paul Sweeney welcomed news of the shutdown but said more needed to be done to combat drug dealers.
He said: “While any efforts to disrupt these peddlers of misery are to be welcomed, it’s ultimately a futile game of cat and mouse.
“We need to strip away the demand for criminal gangs to supply drugs in the first place by properly regulating supply and distribution in a controlled way through the NHS.”
Telegram, a free download similar to WhatsApp, is popular with teenagers and is gaining 1.5million new users each day.
The Record saw a message in which a dealer boasted: “Pills, coke, LSD, MDMA, weed available for sale.”
We also saw posts from people looking to buy illegal substances in the Glasgow area.
A criminal justice insider said: “Encryption is only as good as the end point and when humans are involved that’s the weakness.
"The very fact that you have these screenshots demonstrates that point.”
Police Scotland vowed to investigate the online drug dealers exposed by our probe.
