In a dimly lit room in Manchester, a social media investigator is showing me just how easy it is to buy ketamine online.
He is one of two officers at Greater Manchester Police who have been specially trained to find the platforms, forums and sites being used by criminals to sell drugs.
“It’s effectively run like a legitimate business in the way that Amazon sells legitimate items,” he says.
“The platforms that are being used, it’s Snapchat and Telegram, we see a lot of stuff on WhatsApp, basically in an attempt to avoid traditional policing tactics.”
What the social media investigator describes is a game of cat and mouse, driven by a Class B drug that is being taken in record numbers.
“It’s basically trying to catch up with criminals. If you put it in terms of cars, criminals are driving around in sports cars and things like that,” he says.
“Police are driving round in Fiestas and Astras, and this is exactly the same thing. But we only have to be lucky one day, they have to be lucky every day.”
Against the backdrop of increasing media coverage and greater public awareness of ketamine, the popular party drug is now firmly in the sights of police forces across the country, including GMP.
Detective Superintendent Joseph Harrop, who leads the force’s serious organised crime division, says ketamine is presenting officers with unique challenges.
“I think one of the issues is that it’s readily available and it’s really cheap, which is why I think it’s attractive to children and young people,” he says.
“There is a worrying trend that younger and younger children are using it. We’ve got children as young as 10, either with ketamine or involved in the supply of ketamine.”
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DSI Harrop says another way organised crime groups are making a profit from ketamine is by exporting the drug to countries where it is more tightly regulated or less easily available.
He says GMP seized 50kg of ketamine in the financial year before last, a figure he believes increased substantially in 2025, because his officers made the substance more of a priority.
In his words, ketamine seizures went up “exponentially”, while there was also a “massive rise” in the amount of intelligence the force has collected on the drug.
“One of the big challenges is because you’ve not got that traditional street supply,” he adds.
“So that does impact on some of our intelligence streams. It is all online, so there’s a sense of anonymity, and you’ve kind of got to get behind another layer before you can see who’s truly involved, but we’ve adapted to that.”
Online menus and faceless transactions
The social media investigator I spoke to is a core part of GMP’s attempts to adapt to the challenges ketamine poses.
He spends time trying to trace the online stores being set up on social media by drug dealers. The criminals curate menus, ask for reviews and even offer people perks, like free sweets being delivered along with their drugs.
Ketamine, he says, is often sold alongside other popular party drugs like cocaine and MDMA, in varying strengths and quantities. The purchases are often made using what he calls “faceless” transactions involving cryptocurrency, while the drugs are often delivered in the post, rather than by a courier.
Once the investigator tracks down an account, he flags their content, in the hope that the tech giants who own the platforms will act quickly.
“Some companies are brilliant,” he says. “Within 24 hours they’ll get back to me and go, you know what? We agree and they’ll remove that account.
“Other companies, if they don’t see that perceived risk or that account as being a problem, they’ll just say, ‘thanks, but we’ll leave it’. They will let that account continue.”
If there is enough evidence, information found online can lead to warrants being carried out on the ground.
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During a nationwide county lines week of action, I joined GMP officers on a dawn raid in Salford.
The operation targeted a county line involving the supply and distribution of popular party drugs like ketamine, cannabis, cocaine and MDMA.
Once officers had stormed a flat, they made two arrests, leading a pair of men into a van that was waiting outside.
The officer in charge of the warrant on the day said party drugs are an increasing issue in the area, which is popular among young professionals and students.
“There are multiple people that are known to us, continuously supplying drugs. We’re working hard to disrupt this criminality, executing lots of warrants and getting these guys inside and remanded,” he said.
“So with ketamine, it’s a drug well-used by students, so the younger target market here is rife.”
‘You can’t arrest your way out of people using drugs’
The drugs being seized aren’t just leading to convictions and custodial sentences. In another element of GMP’s drugs strategy, there is a focus on not just enforcement but harm reduction too.
GMP works closely with Manchester Drug Analysis and Knowledge Exchange (Mandrake), England’s first publicly-funded permanent, city-centre based testing and harm reduction facility.
The samples seized by officers on the raids are sent to the Mandrake testing facility at Manchester Metropolitan University so the team there can check exactly what’s in circulation on the illegal drugs market.
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That information is then shared with the police, council and health bodies, so they can issue public warnings.
Dr Oliver Sutcliffe, who leads the team at the facility, says that of the 600-700 samples they received for testing in the last 12 months, ketamine is “about the second or third” most seized sample.
In the week we filmed with Dr Sutcliffe, Mandrake issued a public health warning about ketamine being contaminated with medetomidine, a high-strength sedative used by vets on large animals.
Dr Sutcliffe showed me three samples of ketamine that all look the same, but were actually of different purities. One of them contained medetomidine.
“It’s an anaesthetic and if you combine that with another aesthetic, then what you get is a synergistic effect. So that enhances the sedation,” he said.
“And that potentially might put you in positions where if you’re more sedated, you might have an accident.”
Pointing to the three samples, he said: “If you just visually look at the crystals, they are exactly the same, so from a user’s point of view, you would not necessarily be able to tell the difference.”
The route a sample takes from a crime scene to Dr Sutcliffe’s lab is perhaps the biggest example of how the police are being forced to change course with a drug like ketamine, which is now so commonplace.
DSI Harrop explained how GMP is trying to police the drug differently.
He said: “There was a near-fatal overdose yesterday, where some powder was recovered. The people with the individual who is currently in hospital have suggested she may have taken ketamine.
“We found some powder, but rather than look to do any kind of prosecution, which I think to some extent is fairly futile, I spoke to the Manchester Met (Manchester Metropolitan University) panel last night and they’re going to test those for us.”
“You can’t arrest your way out of people using drugs,” he added.
