The powers afforded to British enforcement agencies are sweeping, and the sentences handed down by the courts severe. Persons convicted of trafficking face up to life imprisonment, plus confiscation of their assets if these are presumed to be the proceeds of trafficking. Confiscation, as originally recommended by the Hodgson Committee, was intended to be a just but humane penalty which would take away from convicted parties their ill-gotten wealth, thus overcoming the perceived scandal that a person might serve a prison term and then be free to enjoy that wealth. It was envisaged that the imposition of a confiscation order would be taken into account in reducing the length of a prison sentence. However, this aspect of the Committee's recommendations has been overlooked. The Home Office, despite being concerned about Britain's growing prison population, announced that maximum terms of imprisonment for drug trafficking were to be increased. The authors discuss: (1) the development of financial penalties; (2) the escalation of imprisonment; (3) the administration of justice; and (4) the kinds of punishment, and at what level, that are in the public interest in relation to drug trafficking.