SPECIAL REPORT, DAY 2: Working to keep a lid on drugs market

THE collapse of the cocaine market with the economic downturn meant those at the top of Cork’s drug trade had to diversify — and they diversified into the more downmarket heroin, according to the city’s top garda.

Heroin, says Chief Superintendent Mick Finn, has been more visible in Cork City in recent months as users are moving from smoking the drug to injecting it.

But, he argues, the greatest increase in usage was in 2006/07, when Garda detections soared from just four in 2004 to 77 in 2006. Detections of the drug peaked at 197 in 2009 and have been decreasing since.