A board game in which players cash in by kidnapping children went on sale days after Roy Whiting was jailed for murdering Sarah Payne.

Detectives who put the eight-year-old schoolgirl's killer behind bars last night slammed Dibbles and Dollars as "abhorrent".

Players of the £50 X-rated game compete to become drug barons, buying and selling illegal drugs instead of property, bribing police and collecting benefit cheques as they pass Go.

Game cards offer a £90,000 reward for snatching a teenage girl, who is pictured bound and gagged.

Another card shows a young, blonde-haired girl clutching a teddy bear. The £150,000 challenge reads: "I know kids are usually off limits but look at the dough. It's gonna be easy ain't it."

Players keep score using an imitation syringe pen.

Clothes boutique Minky in Sydney Street, Brighton, is one of fewer than ten shops across the UK to stock the game. Its first order sold out within days.

Detective Superintendent Alan Ladley, who led the inquiry into Sarah's death, said: "Anything which trivialises the serious impact drug dealing and child offences have on the community I find appalling.

"It's not funny. Perhaps if it was a version of Monopoly based on drug dealing there might be a few people who would find it amusing. But kidnapping children? It's abhorrent."

Lewes MP Norman Baker, the Lib Dem's home affairs spokesman, said: "It's a pretty sick idea. You might expect it if a 15-year-old had created it but these people ought to know better."

A spokesman for Minky said: "We had a handful at first and they sold out within days so I ordered another batch. We're getting loads of inquiries.

"There's only two cards which mention kidnap. If you're putting that up against playing a game which involves selling £500,000-worth of crack cocaine and staging an armed robbery, it's clearly tongue-in-cheek."

Latest figures show Brighton and Hove has around 1,800 "problem" drug users who spend £23 million a year feeding their habit, of which £15 million is raised through crime.

Rosie Brocklehurst, from the city's drug and alcohol charity Addaction, said: "Impressionable young people coming across adults playing this game might get the idea it is okay to make money by dealing because it is just a game.

"But thousands of desperate heroin and cocaine addicts know it's not. The police who have to deal with crime know it's not.

"And the 2,000 heroin addicts who die in the UK every year are out of the game anyway."

The game's creators, former computer programmer Brian O'Mahony, 37, and sales manager Neil Bradshaw, spent four years designing and marketing the game, with almost £40,000 backing.

A disclaimer in the rule book reads: "The makers would like to make it clear that, despite the content of this game, it should in no way be seen as advocating or encouraging drug use or crime.

"What we do believe in is education, information, awareness and the adult individual's right to choose."

The game's packaging includes numbers for the National Drug Helpline, Release, Ash and Crime Concern and a guide to safer injecting.