40% of heroin addicts started on drugs by age 14
This marks a significant rise on 1997 - when only a quarter of heroin users started on drugs this young.
The survey of 131 heroin users found 35% of addicts funded their habit through crime, mainly shoplifting, burglary, robbery and drug dealing. Some 66 users (44%) admitted to selling drugs at some stage to feed their habit.
Of those that do not commit crime to pay for heroin, 14% said they used their social welfare, 18% said they received money from their partner/parents or friends, while 5% used money from work or FÁS.
Those surveyed said they spent on average between €350 to €420 a week on drugs.
This would indicate that the 5,341 heroin addicts known to gardaí spend between €97m to €116m every year.
This does not include a further 9,000 experimental or recreational users, who are not known to gardaí.
The detailed survey of heroin users known to gardaí also found that:
75% had been charged or summonsed in relation to a crime in the last three years.
50% of those who committed crime did so at least once a day.
66% had served time in prison.
However, the researchers expressed some doubts over the accuracy of the figures provided by respondents and said they should be taken “as illustrative rather than indicative”.
However, Tony Geoghegan, of Merchants Quay Ireland, the country’s largest voluntary treatment clinic for drug users, said the estimates sound credible.
The survey details are contained in a report on Opiate Use and Related Criminal Activity in Ireland, published by the Garda Research Unit.
Gardaí found most users were male, in their 20s, unemployed and had left school early.
Data in the report from 2000 and 2001 shows heroin users were responsible for 28% of detected crime - even though they made up less than 1% of the population.
The report said this figure was likely to be an underestimate given the 9,000 heroin users not known to gardaí.
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