Cocaine-alcohol mix alarms doctors

COCAINE users who have taken the drug while drunk have been admitted to A&E departments in a coma, the head of Rutland Treatment Centre said yesterday.

In the past six to 12 months, up to 20 users visiting the centre had admitted abusing cocaine as part of a cocktail of drugs, Stephen Rowen said.

"Cocaine is becoming more and more frequently-mentioned. While the number is small, they (user numbers) are far greater than they were just 18 months ago and more low-income people are using it," Mr Rowen said.

"Younger, more professional types who drink a great deal and go way over the top with cocaine are having very serious problems. A number who have taken dangerously high levels of cocaine in combination with alcohol have ended up in A&E, sometimes in a coma or sometimes as a result of an accident or an assault," he said.

People who have been using cocaine for three or four years were now seeking treatment, usually for a combination of cocaine and alcohol or opiate abuse, he said.

"Unfortunately, we are seeing a lot more of it now. Trends in drug use tend to travel from the US to the UK, and then onto Ireland, and I fear cocaine will be no different.

"In the United States, the cocaine epidemic was everywhere. I don't want to over-dramatise this, but it is going to become more and more of a problem in all parts of Ireland."

Hugh Gallagher, who runs methadone treatment clinics in the Eastern Regional Health area, said he had seen a worrying increase in the number of heroin addicts and methadone patients who were injecting cocaine.

The development was particularly worrying as injecting carried a high risk of HIV or hepatitis C transmission, Dr Gallagher said.

He said cocaine use was a major public health concern in Britain, and warned that abuse could spread across Ireland.

Users could become physically and psychologically addicted to the drug, and its use could alter personality and mood, he said.

Cocaine use could also lead to depression, weight loss and fatigue. The more serious problems associated with its abuse included epileptic seizures or heart attacks.

A garda spokesman could not provide official figures for seizures over the last 18 months. However, among the larger hauls this year was the seizure of cocaine worth 400,000 in Dublin Airport on April 28, the seizure of 76,000 worth of the drug in Clondalkin, Dublin, on April 19, and the discovery of 60,000 worth of rock cocaine in Dublin on Friday.

Earlier this week, customs officers found 400,000 worth of the drug in the luggage of a woman arriving at Dublin Airport.