The concept of county lines, defined by the National Crime Agency (2015), refers to the distribution of drugs through the exploitation of young and vulnerable individuals by organised crime groups from cities with oversaturated markets to rural and coastal areas with less drugs supply. Since its emergence, county lines has attracted significant political attention, resulting in a surge of drug policing strategies and welfare interventions aimed at safeguarding those at risk of exploitation. Since the development of the concept, academics have not only questioned the novelty of the county lines model (Spicer, 2021) but also how the politicisation of the concept has perpetuated historic issues of classist and racialised drugs policing (Koch et al., 2023).

This paper presents findings from PhD research interviews with stakeholders and practitioners involved in responding to county lines. Interviews were informed by a critical discourse analysis of drug policy related to county lines, which heavily referenced multiagency working as the recommended response to county lines exploitation. This paper examines how the concept of county lines has evolved in policy, how it is operationalised in practice, and draws conclusions on whether its political construction has hindered effective responses to vulnerability that centre harm reduction.

This paper will also consider the developments towards harm reduction policing approaches to county lines drug supply, by considering county lines as a case study to highlight the harms of drug prohibition. The findings suggest that responses to county lines are operating under a contradictory policy landscape, making responding to the perceived problem in a way that centres harm reduction more challenging. However, there have been some shifts towards harm reduction policing to respond to county lines. To conclude, this paper calls for a re-imagining of drug policy and policing that centres harm reduction over punitive measures to respond to county lines.