Irish markets ‘being flooded with cheap ecstasy’

IRELAND is being flooded with massive quantities of cheap ecstasy, garda and criminal sources have told the Irish Examiner.

The amount of ecstasy seized last year by gardaí estimated at around two million tablets is more than the previous seven years added together.

Senior gardaí privately admit they are only intercepting around 10% of what is actually coming into the country.

Last month, the second-biggest single seizure of the drug in recent years was made in Co Laois.

The haul of 500,000 tablets were ear-marked for markets in Cork, Limerick, Clare and Galway.

The price of ecstasy has continued to fall, and can be bought for as little as €5 or €7 on the street.

One senior garda said: "The seizures we are seeing since last year are astronomical. If we hit 10% of the trade we'll be doing exceptionally well.

"We are seeing very large quantities. That's because the profit margin is so big. Take the 500,000 tablet seizure; they probably bought that for 10 cent a tablet at source."

He added: "More gangs are getting involved. Where they used to buy it from traffickers here for €2 a tablet, they are now knocking out the middle man and getting a flight to Holland and buying them at knock-down prices."

He said a shift in production to eastern Europe was also swelling the market.

"Ecstasy is usually sourced in Holland. The pressure is coming on them to control the use of precursors used to make ecstasy.

"As a result manufacturing is moving to the EU accession countries, to the former eastern block, places like Poland, where there isn't such tight control. That's why it's flooding in."

Intelligence gathered by the EU police agency, Europol, also indicates that production is spreading to Eastern Europe and Asia a view shared by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

In a recent report, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said: "Although the number of production facilities is relatively stable, advances in methodology, increased sophistication of manufacturing equipment and increasing involvement of specialists is resulting in ever-increasing production efficiency and capacity."

The report noted that while the Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, Belgium, remain major production sites, manufacturing is occurring in Spain, Britain, France as well as Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.

Reports of increased production and falling prices come in the wake of a recent report highlighting the long term memory risks associated with ecstasy.