'A blizzard': Regional services fear growing scale of cocaine use

"I made the comment last year that it was snowing in Galway. You could 'up that’ and say it is now blowing a blizzard. It’s everywhere, every little village, every little townland, every little boreen with the grass growing down the middle," he says.

The most recent Health Research Board statistics for such cocaine-related deaths related to three years ago, but the evidence of the increase is stark. In 2011, cocaine was identified in 24 of 314 drug-related deaths, while in 2020, that figure had increased more than five-fold. Of 409 drug poisoning deaths in Ireland in 2020, cocaine was identified as the primary cause in 130 cases.

Bear in mind that that figure relates only to people who have sought help for their cocaine addiction. In the midst of these emerging health issues and the increasing number of people seeking support for addiction, An Garda Síochána has sought to tackle and disrupt criminal gangs involved in drug distribution throughout the country under 'Operation Tara'.

While some gangs are involved in a secondary business of making ‘home-grown’ cannabis – in grow-houses dotted throughout the country - all the gangs are involved in getting cocaine into Ireland by any means necessary. Young led one of the four criminal gangs identified by Gardaí as operating in the north-west. He had about twenty criminals working for him. He was brought to justice this summer when he pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court and was jailed for 11 years.

"Anybody that's involved in organized crime, particularly in the importation, sale, supply of drugs, are driven by greed, fueled by arrogance and reckless as to the consequences of their action," he said.

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