Chief Constable Gary Roberts has acknowledged that the island’s drugs laws are allowing organised crime to ’flourish’.

Over the past two years officers in the island, working with colleagues in Merseyside, have seized about £2m of drugs, money and assets.

In his annual report, he acknowledged the recent consultations into cannabis use for medicinal purposes in the island, saying the government had made ’bold steps to canvass public views about cannabis, medicinal use of cannabis products and about hemp’.

Mr Roberts added: ’I will limit my comments to this: our current approach creates the environment within which organised crime flourishes.

’The only market is an illegal one which, by definition, is run by criminals who happen to be violent. It is in their interests for the status quo to continue.’

The Examiner asked Mr Roberts whether he would like to see a change in the island’s drugs laws, to which he replied: ’That is a decision for policy and lawmakers’.

The Chief Constable’s report also noted that the island’s force has had success in working with their colleagues in Merseyside in tackling drugs coming to the island.

Mr Roberts said some of the seizures and arrests were still sub-judice but some have resulted in long-term prison sentences.

He added: ’Our focus has been relentless, but it has highlighted the scale of the local drugs market which, even at a conservative estimate, is surely worth several hundreds of thousands of pounds a month.’

The Chief Constable said that cannabis was the most seized drug and that some people ’disagree with the police spending time and resources tackling the trade in cannabis’.

However, he added: ’Any such view is naive at several levels. Cannabis is illegal and the constabulary has no choice in what laws it enforces.’

Mr Roberts said that the police were aiming to target traffickers, ’not first time or low level users’. He also denounced the idea of a ’romantic public-spirited cannabis trafficker’.

He added that they were often serious career criminals.

However, the success in tackling drug crime has created other problems with criminals who do not receive payment for the drugs they have supplied. The report says this often leads to ’extracting a form of payment through violence’.

Mr Roberts said: ’The person owing the debt is often beaten and it is not unusual for considerable violence, including the use of weapons to be exercised.

’Not all such beatings are reported to the police but there is little doubt that a significant proportion of the increases in recorded violence is linked to drugs debt enforcement.’

He added that while the island has seen extreme violence being used, it ’has not yet seen the criminal use of firearms’.