Alex Ryan death - Painful warning on use of drugs

It cannot have been easy for the family of a young man who died after ingesting an illegal drug to hear a judge, in the criminal case that followed, speak about what he called “the arrogant disregard by young people” of the laws in respect of drug-taking.

Circuit Judge Gerard O’Brien said a sense of middle-class entitlement by young people looking for the “greatest high” formed the background to a Co Cork teenager’s death at an orgy of drink and drugs.

Teenager Alex Ryan paid the ultimate price by taking a so-called designer drug, N-bomb, at a Cork City party last January.

Judge O’Brien’s remarks are welcome in highlighting the reckless attitude that exists among affluent young people — many of them students — both to the supply and the taking of illicit drugs.

Even if the supplier does not personally profit from distributing such drugs, they will have committed a serious crime and could go to jail.

“The participants were middle-class college students, whose sense of entitlement to access that better and greater ‘high’ clouded their judgement,” said Judge O’Brien.

These are not comfortable words but they are necessary ones that every young person should heed, because dealing and consuming illegal drugs is dicing with death.