Drug gangs and organized crime have taken over parts of British cities in the same way as they have in Mexico, Brazil and the United States, Prof. Hamid Ghodse, president of the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board, said as the organization’s annual report was released February 28.

“We are looking at social cohesion, the social disintegration and illegal drugs. In many societies around the world, whether developed or developing, there are communities within the societies which develop which become no-go areas,” he said. “Drug traffickers, organized crime, drug users, they take over. They will get the sort of governance of those areas. Examples are in Brazil, Mexico, in the United States, in the UK—Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester—and therefore it is no good to have only law enforcement, which always shows it does not succeed.”

His statements provoked outrage from leaders and law enforcement in the three cities, who denied that any “no-go” areas existed. Ghodse later backed away from his comments, telling the Manchester Evening News that he meant to say Manchester had problems with drug gangs in the past, but he didn’t mean to imply it still had no-go areas.

However, British society does have a festering problem with its youth—the English riots demonstrated that. Local leaders may be in denial, but Ghodse may be more right than they’d like to admit.