Heroin haunts Limerick
EVER since the demise of the drug gangs in Cork, Limerick has become the gateway for drugs shipments to the south of the country.
The increase in Garda seizures gives an indication of the volume of drugs flowing through the city, but more worrying is the growing evidence of the use of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine in the city.
For years, heroin was a problem restricted to Dublin’s inner city. While so-called recreation drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy where always widely available in Limerick, Class A drugs were few and far between. Not anymore.
The number of heroin addicts in Limerick has doubled in the last year according to the Mid Western Health Board. There are an average of 40 people attending a methadone treatment programme overseen by the Mid Western Health Board (MWHB) from a building on O’Connell Street in the city centre.
Last year, only nine addicts came forward for treatment but over the last 12 months 17 new people signed up for methadone treatment.
Experts like Maria McCully, the MWHB drugs co-ordinator, believe at least three times this number are taking heroin regularly.
“The experience in Dublin is that for every addict who comes forward there are maybe two or three out there taking the drug. People won’t run into difficulty the first time they use the drug. It happens much more slowly than that. From what we can tell in terms of people turning up for treatment there is a definite increase of heroin on the street.”
Unlike heroin, the extent of the use of cocaine is more difficult to gauge. However, because it is more accessible, counsellors on the ground believe that it is now widely in use.
“It’s much harder to quantify the number of people who are taking cocaine frequently because there is no replacement drug to treat them with.
“Often these people would be treated by the mental services, or they might try rehab or a detox alternative,” Maria said.
Maria, who previously worked in the South Inner City in Dublin, believes the drugs problem is getting worse: “It’s developing all the time and it’s certainly not going away. I don’t think it will ever get as bad as Dublin but it’s not getting better.”
There is a culture in Limerick of keeping drug abuse silent, Maria believes: “This problem is often hidden and there has been a huge reluctance to talk about it publicly. While the resources used to fight the problem here are better than they were in Dublin ten years ago, there will never be enough to get to grips with it.”
However, the gardaí insist that the core group of heroin users in the city has not grown in the last 12 months. “This is something we monitor very closely and we estimate that there is about three dozen hard-core users of the drug,” Det Sgt John Heelan said.
The drugs unit at Henry Street Garda Station believe that heroin comes through a different supply channel to cocaine and it’s not dealt openly on the streets: “You would have a network of people who know each other. There were efforts here to source the drug through Britain but a Garda operation has stopped that.”
An addict feeding his/her heroin habit in Limerick would in extreme cases have to fork out upwards of 500 a day. The health board estimate that most heroin users spend about 100 a day on the drug.
“This is something that we would keep a very close eye on because any rise in the number of heroin users could have a direct effect on crime,” Det Sgt Heelan added.
The biggest worry facing gardaí at the moment is the huge increase in the seizures of cocaine and 1 million worth of the drug has been seized already this year. This is being sold throughout the city at prices ranging from 75 to 100 a gram.
“There was a time when cocaine was seen as a rich man’s drug but that is no longer the case. Nowadays people in the 18-25 age brackets with disposable incomes are snapping up the drug,” Det Sgt Heelan said. Seizures of ecstasy are also up. More than 250,000 ecstasy tablets have been seized by gardaí this year, with tablets costing between 8 and 10. However, cannabis still makes up three quarters of the total amount of illegal drugs taken.
Community activist and city councillor John Gilligan believes families destroyed by drug abuse are too afraid to speak about the problem.
Availability of drugs is a key issue. Cllr Gilligan, who has been representing his area, St Mary’s Park, on the City Council for the last 11 years, claims that every kind of drug can be bought with ease in the city: “You can get any drug you want. This wasn’t the case ten years ago but now it’s getting as bad as Dublin was.”
The drugs can be bought everywhere but they are especially prevalent in some housing estates, Cllr Gilligan said: “We’re trying to combat it, but so many young people have drifted into drugs in the last few years. I’ve even heard about children as young as seven years collapsing after they overdosed on cocaine.”
The situation has become so bad that Cllr Gilligan knows of incidents where people have committed suicide because they couldn’t pay debts to drug dealers: “We saw what went on in Dublin and we’re going to have to stand up and make sure this doesn’t happen here.”
Limerick City GP Richard O’Flaherty also believes there are well over 100 heroin addicts in the city.
“This is a very serious problem. I’m sure about this because I used to treat these people in my clinic. There is and never has been enough facilities to treat addicts in this city,” he said.
Dr O’Flaherty who is a member of the MWHB said that hundreds of people in the city are also taking cocaine.
“There are hundreds taking this drug which is a soul destroying killer. It’s business people and party-goers who take it most often.
“When you look around it’s clear that the gardaí are seizing only a tiny amount. It’s the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Cllr Gilligan is warning that the problem will spiral out of control unless drug abuse is made a priority by the health and law authorities in the city.
“You hear many people saying that alcohol is the biggest problem but I know that it’s drugs. I see this happening all around me.
“Families are being torn apart and there is just no way back for them. We must start talking about this horrific problem very quickly.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
