HYPOCRISY OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS COCAINE USERS WHOSE ‘FUN’ LEAVES BODIES IN DITCHES
When they are not obsessing over organic salads and climate change, flush professionals are hoovering up the party drug – with zero regard for the consequences
MIDDLE-CLASS cocaine users are on the rise again – and have been criticised for their ‘hypocrisy’ in supporting social issues while fuelling the drug trade, criminality and the destruction of lives.
Ireland ranks fourth highest in the EU for use of cocaine among young adults, while three out of 10 people aged between 15 and 64 have used illicit drugs including cannabis, MDMA or cocaine.
With the economy on the rise, politicians and senior gardaí have highlighted the re-emergence of cocaine as the drug of choice among the middle classes across the country. During the last such spike in 2007, then justice minister Michael McDowell hit out at affluent cocaine users. He said: ‘If you do a line of cocaine in Foxrock you are personally responsible for the murder of somebody in Clondalkin or Coolock.’
Following a decline in cocaine-related deaths between 2008 and 2012, figures have started to rise again, with 44 deaths recorded between 2013 and 2015. Among the most high profile of these were broadcaster Gerry Ryan and model Katy French. This week, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service hit out at the growing crisis. ‘There are a whole group of middle-class people,’ said Commissioner Cressida Dick, ‘who think about global warming and fair trade and environmental protection, organic food and all sorts of things… but think there is no harm in taking a bit of cocaine.’
‘Well, there is,’ she said. ‘There’s misery throughout the supply chain.’
Mr McDowell agreed, saying the Met Chief’s comments echo his sentiments from just over a decade ago. He added that consumers of cocaine and other drugs ‘think it’s purely private morality but it isn’t. There are bodies in ditches all over the world because of the drug trade.
‘You can’t be a consumer and wash your hands of all the death and suffering that it causes.’
Fine Gael TD and pharmacist Kate O’Connell ‘absolutely’ believes it is hypocritical of the middle classes to care about social issues and use cocaine.
Speaking to the MoS yesterday, the Dublin Bay South TD said: ‘I absolutely do see it [the hypocrisy]. Somewhere along the line of trading there is a vulnerable person being used.’
Her party colleague Noel Rock, TD for Dublin North West, agreed. He said people who consider themselves socially conscious should ‘open their eyes’.
‘It is a criminal activity. It’s funding money laundering and it damages society. So, if you care about society, you should be concerned by the effects drugs use has on society.’
In response to the growing crisis, junior health minister Catherine Byrne launched a campaign, developed by the Ana Liffey Drug Project and the HSE, to raise awareness about the dangers of cocaine. However, Ms O’Connell believes there was a ‘lost opportunity’ to tackle cocaine use when numbers were down during the recession. She said educating children is ‘key’ to stamping out drug use.
In an interview with the MoS this week, Detective Sgt Brian Roberts of the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, said the market only exists because there is demand for the drugs: ‘Without demand there is no market. Those who purchase drugs from suppliers are exactly those that create and support this illegal industry.’ He said the ‘gravity’ of the effect drugs have on society becomes ‘very real’ when a garda has to deliver tragic news to parents of a drug overdose.
He added that people who use drugs ‘are from all walks of life and all sectors of society’.
‘You can’t just wash your hands of all the death’
Additional reporting by Ruaidhrí Giblin and Martin Healy