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People who snort cocaine at middle-class dinner parties should feel "guilt and responsibility" for a surge in deaths on the streets, the Justice Secretary said today.

Tory David Gauke warned people must "recognise they are fuelling the industry" even if they can't see stabbings and shootings with their own eyes.

It comes after the government released a 114-page Serious Violence Strategy that warned soaring crack cocaine trade was fuelling youth violence.

Mr Gauke told Sky News' Ridge on Sunday: "People who do that have to recognise they are fuelling the industry that's resulting in the knife crimes, that's resulting in the difficulties we're having in prisons.

"The violent crime we see inside and outside prison is strongly linked to drugs trade.

"The damage that is doing to the fabric of our society... There's a responsibility for middle class people that take cocaine at a dinner party.

(Image: Getty) (Image: Getty)

"When they see a story of a 15-year-old boy stabbed in Hackney (east London), well, they should feel a degree of guilt and responsibility."

Mr Gauke's words came as Britain suffers a knife-crime epidemic.

Police Federation deputy treasurer Simon Kempton has also blamed the wealthy for creating the demand for cocaine.

And security minister Ben Wallace has warned the UK is "fast becoming the biggest consumer" of the Class A in Europe.

The government last month said the drug's purity in England rose from 36% in 2013 to 71% in 2016.

Meanwhile drug gangs are heading out of the city to exploit markets in smaller, more rural areas across "county lines".

Vulnerable people - particularly children - have been identified by the government as carrying drugs across county lines.

(Image: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media)

In the same interview today Mr Gauke suggested fewer women could be sent to prison for committing crimes in future.

He said the 84,000 people in prison are “too high” a number and “I would like to bring it down”.

He added: "I think there is a very good point in saying that of the 4000 or so female offenders who are in custody, how many of them can be dealt with through other means?

"Non-custodial sentences are certainly something to look at, more support in the community rather than within prisons is something we have to look at.

"There will of course still be women who need to be in prison, serious offenders, but I think there is scope to look at that number and I think that number could come down."