‘Yeah you would rob your mother for heroin, for crack you’d actually kill her’
Addiction Response Crumlin (ARC) in Dublin said in the last six months the drug is being sold on the streets as crack. Before that, addicts bought cocaine in powder form and made it into crack themselves.
“In the first half of the year around one in five of the people attending the cocaine project were using crack. Now, it’s half,” said Rachel Cahill of the Croí Nua cocaine project at ARC.
“Up until the last six months or so people using it would have been ‘washing it up’ themselves at home. The dealers have now cottoned on to that and have decided to do it themselves. They see there’s a demand for it. At the moment, it’s widely available and sold as crack. In the last three months, it’s as easy to get rock than a bag of powder.”
She said that at the end of last year, the project had 15 cocaine clients on its books, three of them crack users.
In the first half of this year, the project saw 50 new clients, 40 of them cocaine users, 10 of them crack users. In the later half of the year, they have 10 new cocaine users and 10 new crack users.
“This is extremely worrying. What’s worst is just seeing the devastation that’s happening so quickly because of it. The same amount of devastation didn’t happen as rapidly with heroin. I would consider crack even worse than injecting cocaine, because what happens when someone is injecting cocaine is they’ll inject a certain amount, then it’s just physically impossible, they just can’t get veins. With crack every pipe you have you are getting a hit,” said Ms Cahill.
Crack cocaine use has been reported in certain parts of Dublin particularly in the past two years, but in most cases the crack is made by the users.
Specific Garda operations were set up in the north inner city two years ago when crack cocaine emerged as a low-level problem. Gardaí targeted a number of west Africans in the area involved in the sale and use of the drug.
Anna Quigley of the Dublin Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign said: “The situation in the north inner city is being tracked over the last year and so far it does not seem to be escalating, it seems to be very limited. Again we have to keep monitoring that, it could change.”
But she said ARC was the first project to notice the emergence of the cocaine epidemic, before it appeared elsewhere.
“Their intelligence is always accurate. We’ve seen over the years that when Crumlin sees something, you tend to find other areas follow.”
Ms Cahill said that her crack clients were clocking up massive financial debts.
“One person who is new to crack told me he was spending €800-€1,000 a day. That’s where the fallout’s quicker.”
As a result, the amount of crime being committed is much higher, because the amount of money needed is greater.
“A lot of females are engaged in prostitution, it’s much easier to prostitute than go out and try and rob,” said Ms Cahill. “The need with crack is much worse than heroin. One girl said ‘yeah you would rob your mother for heroin, for crack you’d actually kill her’.”
CRACK cocaine is a powerful stimulant derived from powdered cocaine and is considered more addictive.
It is produced by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and ammonia or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). The mixture is boiled until it becomes solid, dried and broken into the chunks (rocks) that are sold as crack cocaine.
Crack rocks are white or off-white and vary in size and shape. Street deals in Dublin are sold for €50-€55. A new user may get three to four hits.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
