Whether it’s county lines gangs, sellers on the dark web or street-corner dealers, drugs play a sizeable part in the criminal activity in ­Britain today.

Estimates put their cost to society at around £19billion.

Yet the tactics and markets used by them all – from petty crooks to kingpins – were established by a generation of “Mr Bigs” who got things rolling.

Now the British “narcos” are named in a book that charts, for the first time, the rise of the modern drug trade.

It also details the cat-and-mouse games played between the smugglers and the Customs ­officials, who each found ingenious ways to outwit each other.

Drug War describes how the sale of illegal narcotics and ­­stimulants first boomed.

These men have flooded Britain with drugs like cocaine (
Image:
Getty)

In 2018 there were 4,359 deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales – the highest ever, and also the highest known year-on-year rise, at 16%.

Cocaine seizures in Europe are at a record high, with more than a million drug busts annually.

Here we look at the criminals who blazed a trail that still blights us.

  • Drug War: The Secret History by Peter Walsh is out now in paperback from Milo Books.

Gurdev Singh Sangha - First modern drug baron

Gurdev Sangha was a laser scientist (
Image:
Milo Books)

Gurdev Singh Sangha was a brilliant laser scientist – and the first modern drug baron.

Arriving in London from India in his teens, he got an honours degree, a masters and a PhD
in the 1960s while secretly importing bulk quantities of cannabis resin known as charas.

He was first brought to justice by customs officer Sam Charles.

Using skills honed chasing watch smugglers, Sam became the most influential man in Britain’s drug war.

He started one of the first “data mining” operations, scouring air freight and cargo records for information that did not stack up.

That led him to 113kg of resin hidden in a cargo of mango pickles.

A scrawl on a cigarette packet took them to Gurdev Singh Sangha, who was jailed for five years – but started up again on his release.

His arrest helped unveil an East Asian network that fed cities around the UK.

Bobby and Ronnie - London and Scotland

Wealthy bookmaker Mills masterminded a plot to bring 'cannabis by the tonne' (
Image:
Alamy)

Bobby Mills and Ron Taylor, a south London villain and a former Scottish miner, formed an unlikely partnership that revolutionised the drugs trade in the 1970s.

After meeting in the army during National Service, they turned to crime and both served jail terms before discovering the cannabis boom.

The first major traffickers to be regarded as hardcore criminals rather than hippies or chancers, they sailed tonnes of hashish from Morocco on their own ship, the Guiding Lights, until they were caught in a joint police-Customs operation.

They were both were arrested again a decade later, unable to resist the lure of easy money.

Brian Wright- The Milkman

Brian Brendan Wright was said to 'always deliver' (
Image:
PA)

Brian Wright, now 73, was the thinking man’s smuggler, a sharply-dressed, well-groomed London-Irishman who masterminded the importation of tonnes of coke in the drug-fuelled nineties and laundering his cash through the sport of horse racing, placing massive wagers while bribing jockeys and stable hands to ‘nobble’ some of the runners.

He was known as ‘the Milkman’ because he always delivered.

‘Of all the people I have worked on, he was the most impressive,’ says a senior Customs investigator.

‘He never talked business on the phone. I never heard him shout at anyone. His philosophy was, do everything discreetly, face to face, don’t get involved in violence.’

His empire is said to be worth around £600m and he was forced to cough up £2.3m of his ill-gotten gains.

After one of the longest drug investigations ever launched, Operation Extend, he was jailed for 30 years. He was released in April 2020 after serving half of his sentence.

Victor and Miguel Mejia-Munera - The Twins

Wanted poster of Miguel Angel Mejia Munera and Victor Manuel Mejia Munera (
Image:
EPA)

Victor and Miguel Mejia-Munera, two deadly brothers from Colombia, made London’s Kray twins look like pussycats.

Experts in maritime logistics, they supplied Brian Wright with yacht-loads of powder before moving on to the biggest shipments ever known: multiple tonnes hidden inside huge cargo vessels known as motherships.

They also commanded their own army of right-wing paramilitaries and controlled smuggling corridors through the jungle. Miguel was the warrior, Victor the financial brain.

Their bloody reign came to an end when Victor was shot dead by soldiers in 2008.

Miguel was arrested and extradited to the USA, where he served a long jail term and is believed to have cooperated with the CIA. He is currently still incarcerated, awaiting repatriation to Colombia.

Ahmet ‘Gigi’ Bekir - The Lord of Green Lanes

Ahmet Bekir was known as The Lord of Green Lanes (
Image:
Mirrorpix)

Ahmet ‘Gigi’ Bekir was the country’s first heroin kingpin. A judo expert and fitness fanatic from Cyprus, he settled in the Green Lanes area of north London, ran clubs and cafes, and sold pep pills during the ‘Mod’ era.

He then went on to pioneer the sale of Turkish ‘smack’ at a time when abuse was increasing, using two smuggling methods: couriers through London’s airports and luxury cars driven overland.

He was said to have imported up to £38 million of narcotics when his reign was empire was busted in 1980 and he was jailed for 14 years.

Howard Marks - Mr Nice

Howard Marks was known as 'Mr Nice' (
Image:
ExpressStar)

Marks was the young Welshman reading Physics at Oxford University who went on to become Britain’s most famous drug smuggler.

But at one point he was the mere apprentice to another student Graham Plinston, who was a sharp-minded dealing wizard.

It was only when he was locked up after being caught at the Swiss-German border with a stash of hash in his car, that Marks - who had seen how lucrative his mentor’s smuggling operation was - offered to take care of business.

(
Image:
Milo Books)

Marks simply loved smoking dope and could see no reason for its illegality. He also liked the money, and the excitement of trafficking: ‘I’d get a religious flash and an asexual orgasm every time I did it … It was dangerous fun.’

Marks became the country’s most notorious smuggler.

He was caught for the biggest shipment ever known – 15 tonnes of Colombian grass – only to walk free after claiming he was an agent of MI6, and was later immortalised as ‘Mr Nice’, one of his many aliases. He died of cancer in 2016, aged 70.

Tommy Comerford - Top Cat

Tommy Comerford was known as Top Cat (
Image:
Liverpool Echo)

By the early 1980s Liverpool had an underworld of more than 50 gangsters involved in running marijuana through the city’s docks, using corrupt port workers and protected by bent police.

But the main man was Tommy ‘Top Cat’ Comerford, infamous as the first person to smuggle major quantities of every illegal drug: amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, heroin and LSD.

He was a flamboyant figure on the Liverpool social circuit - a regular at The Grand National and boxing dinners.

But the Scouse mob was eventually routed when HM Customs dispatched two teams of elite investigators to work in the city for months at a time, and many of the top men were jailed.

Comer ford spent 34 years of his life in prison and had been arrested again in 2003 but died of liver cancer before he could be brought to trial.

Alan Brooks and Micky Green - The Octopus Gang

Micky Green was part of The Octopus Gang

Alan Brooks and Micky Green were the kings of the Costa del Crime: the sixty-mile strip of Spanish coast that became a base for exiled British villains.

Brooks was a risk-taking car dealer from Blackpool who fled to Spain in the early 1980s to avoid fraud charges; Green was a former main face in the Wembley Mob of armed robbers.

They formed the most daring smuggling team on the coast, and a Guardia Civil team that arrested them confiscated luxury yachts, a Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce Corniche and even a light aircraft.

Alan Brooks was another mastermind of the gang (
Image:
Lancashire Evening Post)

Green, known as the ‘Pimpernel’ for his elusiveness, walked free and moved to Holland, while Brooks served a short jail term.

Both were later convicted in their absence in France, and in 2012 Brooks was jailed for 28 years for shipping almost two tonnes of coke. Green died last month of skin cancer, at the age of 77.

Curt Warren - The Cocky Watchman

Curtis Warren plotted to import £1m of cannabis resin into the Channel Islands (
Image:
Mercury Press Agency Ltd.)

Curtis Warren was a Liverpool scally who revolutionised the domestic drugs trade.

He took the skills of the street dealer and applied them to international distribution, and uniquely was found to be behind the country’s biggest importations of both coke and heroin – as well as importing tonnes of hash and millions of ecstasy pills.

He was known as ‘the Cocky Watchman’ for his constant vigilance and curiosity, he was eventually caught by wiretaps placed by the Dutch police. Now aged 57 he is currently serving another long prison term after being convicted of drug smuggling in Jersey.