GLOSSY music videos in which rappers boast about dealing drugs are helping promote the trade to impressionable teenagers, it has been alleged.

The videos see singers talk about their “trap lines”, the slang phrase given to the telephone number addicts will call in order to request heroin or crack cocaine.

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Det Insp Paul Franklin of Wiltshire Police’s dedicated crime team said gangsters were using rap videos posted to websites like YouTube to boast of their crimes.

Recent UK Top 40 hits like rap outfit NSG’s song Options or singer Dave’s smash Funky Friday feature references to drug dealing.

“It’s glamorous. The world of gangs is glamorised,” Mr Franklin said.

“These are British artists, taking about their lifestyle and their experience today."

A lot of the money gangs made would be spent on promotion through music videos, the police officer added.

Last year, London man Connor McGovern was sentenced to almost five years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to supplying heroin and crack cocaine in Swindon.

The 26-year-old, who raps under the moniker Wishwoodz, had spoken of his criminal exploits in song Trap Life Freestyle.

In the music video, which has had almost 8,000 views on YouTube, McGovern sang: “I got a Swindon line [drugs operation], I got a Bournemouth line, chillin’ up in my crib.” The Rowley Woodz gang member also boasted of having a “Rambo”, a slang term for a large knife.

The song lyrics formed part of the evidence gathered by cops.