Gardaí to target street dealers
STREET-LEVEL drug dealers will be targeted in Kerry going forward, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris confirmed this week.
He said that the country has a ‘terrible problem’ with drugs and that significant progress has been made in relation to tackling big shipments of drugs flowing in the country.
However, he said the focus for this year would be on ‘street-level dealers’ in a bid to combat drugs on the streets.
His comments came as garda statistics for Kerry showed that there was an 18-per-cent increase in the number of detections for the possession of drugs for sale or supply in from 2018 to 2019, from 76 to 90, in the Kerry Division.
Similarly, there was a 17-per-cent increase in the detection of drugs for personal use, according to the garda figures.
This increased from 514 to 603 detections. Many of those relate to very small amounts of drugs, ranging from €5, as evident from prosecutions in the district court.
Cllr Michael Cahill (Fianna Fáil) was among the councillors who raised concerns about drugs, citing one incident that he knew of where a man in a rural town was spiked recently.
“Drinks being spiked are on the increase; people have one or two drinks, and then they wake up in a hotel room at 4pm,” he said. “I know of a man recently in a rural parish who had one drink and can’t remember anything,” he told the Joint Policing
Committee.
Cllr Donal Grady also expressed concerns about the increase in drugs in Kerry, and called for an increase in the number of gardaí for the drugs unit in Killarney.
Inspector Mick Fleming also revealed that Gardaí are planning a drug-awareness roadshow to raise awareness of drugs among secondary-schools students. He said he hopes to have this up and running by Quarter Three or Four of this year. This would feature hospital consultants and recovering addicts, and would explain what was in different drug samples.