A NATIONWIDE crackdown against drugs networks criss-crossing the UK netted nearly 30 suspects in swoops on addresses throughout Devon and Cornwall, police revealed today.

Altogether, more than 700 people were detained in the co-ordinated raids across the country between October 7-13.

Drugs with a street value of £400,000 were seized with nearly 50 ‘county lines’ used by offenders disrupted.

In the two counties, 28 arrests were made during the blitz which also included the confiscation of an unknown street value of drugs, three weapons and cash profits from criminal activity.

The local operation featured the execution of numerous warrants, a series of stop-checks and vehicle searches.

A spokeswoman for Devon and Cornwall Police revealed that 90 ‘safe and well’ welfare checks were also undertaken at addresses of ‘vulnerable residents’ in the two counties during the operation.

Nationally, nearly 400 vulnerable adults and 300 children were safeguarded with 169 weapons seized, including a dozen guns and knives, swords and machetes.

More than £250,000 worth of cocaine and some £100,000 worth of crack cocaine was uncovered together with £70,000 of heroin.

Police say they are ‘dismantling these criminal networks piece by piece.’

It’s reckoned about 2,000 county lines - established routes and methods of drug-trafficking - are established throughout the UK.

The operation was led by the National County Lines Coordination Centre, a Home Office-funded unit targetting organised gangs who take their name from mobile phone lines established by crooks to receive orders from drug users.

They use ‘safe houses’ in small towns to support their operations in bigger cities, and regularly use young and vulnerable people by taking over their homes, a practice known as cuckooing, or by employing them as drugs runners.