WITH the dozens of stories every month revealing the scale of County Line drug abuse in our city, we wanted to see first-hand how bad the problem is.

Every day, drug dealers operate throughout Brighton, flogging their gear and degrading our city through the so-called county lines operations where drug dealers from London manipulate the young and vulnerable into selling drugs for them.

So we wanted to investigate further how common drug use is.

Armed with ten cocaine wipes ordered online, we wiped seven of the city's busiest loos to see how bad the problem is - and were horrified by the results.

Swabbing the first toilet in West Pier Arches was an indication of what was to come.

The once pink cocaine wipe, which changes colour once in contact with cocaine, quickly turned blue, detecting a huge amount of the Class-A drug.

"If here of all places has this much cocaine [where the toilets appear cleaner than the rest], what must the rest of the city be like?" I thought.

Before midday I had made my way along the seafront around the city, wiping some of our busiest public loos.

The Argus: Grimey loos were covered in cocaine Grimey loos were covered in cocaine

Each time the wipe turned blue. Over and over again.

A worrying sign but one not entirely unexpected, as The Argus previously discovered drug dealers targetting children at school gates in the city.

Before long, I had wiped seven toilets in Brighton and Hove - all of which yielded the same result.

These were at Brighton railway station, Shelter Hall, Madeira Drive, The Pavilion, Hove lagoon, Western Esplanade and West Pier Arches.

In one shocking case cocaine was found in the family changing room at the Shelter Hall toilets, where the entrance is on the beach level.

We set out to understand the scale of the drug abuse in our city and know our greatest fears have been confirmed - it is rife.