Crack cocaine ‘massive threat to inner city’

THE spread of crack cocaine is the greatest threat facing Dublin’s north inner city, drugs campaigner and independent TD Tony Gregory said yesterday.

He warned that if it continued to spread throughout the drug-using community there would be a crisis equal to, if not worse than, the heroin crisis of the early 1990s.

He was commenting at the launch of the annual report of the Community Policing Forum in the north-east inner city.

The report showed that more than €100,000 worth of crack cocaine had been seized in the area in 2005, double the amount of the previous year.

“Crack cocaine is the greatest threat that faces the north inner city,” said Mr Gregory, who is also the chairman of the forum.

“In last two years, crack cocaine seizures have doubled across the north inner city, before that it was not heard of.”

He said last week a local street committee of the policing forum had told gardaí about crack cocaine dealing at a local flat. He said that within two days the local drug unit had put the dealer out of business.

“At the moment, at least, gardaí are conscious of this and are prepared for it and tackling it,” said Mr Gregory.

“But if crack cocaine spreads throughout the drug-using community we will have a crisis of the same proportion, if not greater, than the heroin crisis of the early 1980s.

“It doesn’t bear thinking about, but at least on this occasion all of the agencies are prepared for it, certainly the gardaí and the community are working to prevent this from happening.”

The community policing forum was set up in the north-east inner city in 1999, following campaigns by local residents for action on open drug-dealing.

“We believe it’s resulted in a more effective and immediate response when dealing comes to the attention of the community,” said Mr Gregory.

The report noted that €1.4m worth of drugs were seized between January and October 2005, an increase of 60% on 2004.

“When you look at a 60% increase in seizures, one way of interpreting that is that there is a bigger drug problem and, unfortunately, throughout the country that is the case.

“But it can also be interpreted, and we interpret it, as effective garda response to drug-dealing, because they are working in partnership with the community.”