Illegal medicines seized in police raids in Bury and Manchester

The raids were part of a wider operation to crack down on counterfeit goods

Thousands of packets of illegal and unlicensed prescription medicines have been seized in police raids.

The drugs, which included painkillers and antidepressants, were found at storage units in Bury and Manchester, Greater Manchester Police said.

Diazepam and tramadol were among the medicines discovered after police cut into the lock-ups.

A man in his 20s from North Manchester has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to supply controlled drugs.

He was also held on suspicion of breaches of medicines regulations and money laundering.

The raids were part of a joint operation with medicines regulators to crack down on the illegal medicine trade.

Grant Powell of the the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said the drugs were being illegally sourced and supplied online "without any prescriptions or medical interventions".

The drugs including diazepam and tramadol were stashed in storage units

The "highly addictive" drugs "could cause issues", with some of those found not licensed for use in the UK, he said.

More than 1.5 million tablets had been seized in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester in the last 12 months according to police data.

Mr Powell said the sale of uncontrolled medicine was "quite a big problem in the UK", with buyers purchasing via encrypted-messaging platforms.

"The risk that you take is you don't know what you're buying unless you take these drugs through a prescription", Det Ch Insp Jenny Kelly said.

The medicines were likely imported into the UK from other countries after they were "siphoned off the supply chain in other countries and sold on black market", she added.

The crackdown is part of Greater Manchester Police's wider Operation Vulcan, aimed at ridding the Cheetham Hill and Strangeways areas of criminals trading in counterfeit goods.