Drug dealers target children aged eight

Young are acting as lookouts and ferrying supplies

CHILDREN as young as eight and nine are being targeted by dealers with drugs such as ‘marijuana, skunk grass, crack cocaine and tablets’, according to campaigners.

Councillor Mannix Flynn has told the Irish Daily Mail how he has seen ‘eight and nineyear-olds involved in the action, involved in taking the drugs and involved in lookouts and in supplying the drugs’.

His stark claims come as figures from the Courts Service confirm there were hundreds of juveniles before the courts in relation to drug offences from January 2014 to May 2017.

Data released under the Freedom of Information Act show how during the first five months of 2017 there was 169 juvenile defendants before the courts for drug related offences.

This number stood at 246 Fury: Councillor Mannix Flynn defendants in 2016; 249 in 2015; and 248 in 2014. Overall, this equates to 912 over the 41-month period.

Meanwhile, it was recently reported that the location for the State’s first drug injection facility will be decided in the autumn.

But Councillor Flynn, an independent on Dublin City Council, is opposed to these facilities and previously described them as a ‘shooting gallery’.

He believes the figures from the courts fail to reflect the real situation on the ground as the problem of ‘youth and drugs and that whole issue is absolutely alarmingly out of control’.

Councillor Flynn said he receives calls from families all around the country and that the situation is no longer limited to urban areas.

‘This disease and addiction holds no bounds about class, creed or colour,’ he said.

‘It’s not just a situation in the urban areas like Cork, Limerick, Dublin it’s also in rural Ireland. It’s also within small villages and towns.’

He believes that drug use is now the ‘norm’ as there is a ‘huge amount of the youth population and the young people taking drugs’ . He claims that dealers are ‘targeting younger and younger people for taking drugs, and that’s the way it is’.

When asked how young these children are, Councillor Flynn said they were between ‘eight and nine’ and said they are ‘absolutely’ addicted.

He said: ‘We definitely know from the evidence that is there, that very young people have been taking heroin.

‘We definitely know that is the situation.

Dublin West TD Jack Chambers, Fianna Fáil’s national drugs strategy spokesman, described the figures supplied by the Courts Service as ‘stark’.

He said: ‘It’s clear that children are being used by ruthless drug dealers across the country where the faceless cowards are making profits off the backs of vulnerable Irish children.

‘This is nothing more than a crisis. Figures like these need to be incorporated into the Government’s national drugs strategy where they are examining a health-led approach.’ Comment – Page 14

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‘Addiction holds no bounds’