New Drugs Effort Planned

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New Drugs Effort Planned

January 11, 2008

By Paddy Clancy

THE government is to step up the battle against drugs abuse. Drugs Strategy Minister Pat Carey said a drive to curb the surge in cocaine and heroin abuse among young people will form a major part of the new national drugs awareness program.

His pledge came as drugs squad detectives joined the investigation into the sudden death of a young man after a night partying in Co. Donegal and as a coroner’s court in Dublin heard how two men died in toilet cubicles after taking heroin. Anxiety about drugs was also raised by the mysterious death of a teenager who was partying in Dublin.

Carey said the government was determined to stamp out the use of deadly drug cocktails that often included the use of alcohol with other substances.

Main opposition justice spokesman Charles Flanagan of Fine Gael said the country now faced an unprecedented problem of heroin and cocaine abuse.

“This is probably the greatest challenge the state is faced with as drug abuse hits every part of the country and affects every age and every class and social standing,” he said.

Flanagan accused the government of incompetence in tackling the problem.

But Carey responded angrily that there was no percentage in politicians trying to score off each other on an issue that affected everybody. He pointed out that in the Dail before Christmas, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny pledged support for the national drugs strategy.

The extent to which drugs abuse has spread into every village in the land was underlined when authorities revealed that toxicology tests have been ordered to establish whether narcotics contributed to the death of 20-year-old laborer Thomas Sheridan.

On Monday police visited a remote shebeen known locally in the hills of Donegal as “the bog hotel” to check reports that it was one of a number of locations visited by the young man.

Sheridan collapsed in a van as he was being driven to his home in Donegal town. He was known to have attended a number of parties in surrounding villages in the 18 hours before his death. Locals said ecstasy was openly available at one party.

The shebeen, suspected to have been the venue for a separate party, is known locally as “the bog hotel” because of its location and because it has been the scene of clandestine drinks parties.

In Dublin, a 15-year-old boy died mysteriously after collapsing at a house party in the working-class suburb of Darndale. The authorities are awaiting the results of tests to establish whether drugs were a contributory factor after pals claimed the youngster experimented for the first time with cocaine.

Also in Dublin, the coroner’s court this week ruled that two men in their early 30s whose bodies were found last year in toilet cubicles in the city were killed by heroin.

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