Yet Another Cocaine Tragedy

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Ireland Calling with John Spain

Yet Another Cocaine Tragedy

December 13, 2007

by John Spain

LAST week was budget week in Ireland, and with the boom slowing fast and worrying signs of sluggishness emerging in the economy, what the Minister for Finance Brian Cowen unveiled in his budget for the coming year is vitally important.

One of the changes made was a fundamental shift in property tax, aimed at preventing the construction sector from going into free fall. Another was a shift in taxation hitting gas guzzlers and favoring low emission vehicles, aimed at reducing our national carbon output. And there were others.

But all that will have to wait for consideration in the future. Because at the end of last week the budget had been turned into a one-day wonder by the story everyone here was talking about, the death at the age of 24 of Ireland’s most high profile young model, Katy French, from a suspected cocaine reaction.

By coincidence this column last week was devoted to a controversial new book on cocaine use among the “respectable” classes in Ireland called The High Society. That book, and the two-part TV documentary based on it, had caused outrage here with accusations that the author had made a lot of it up.

But the deaths of two young men in Waterford after taking cocaine at a party two weeks ago and the death of French at the end of last week have put a stop to that nit picking.

Maybe the book and subsequent TV programs based on it had used questionable and melodramatic methods (none of the cocaine users interviewed were identified in the book and their parts were played by actors on TV). But the story now is not whether the book and TV shows were an exaggeration, but how accurate their depiction of a nation in thrall to cocaine seems to have been.

The outrage from a couple of weeks ago has evaporated. There are no more calls for an inquiry into how RTE could have run two major documentaries based on the book, alleging that cocaine use was so widespread here that “everyone” was doing it.

There are no more demands that the unnamed nun, teacher, doctor, lawyer, pilot and government minister who talked about their cocaine habits should be named, or else it should be admitted that much of the book was made up.

There has been a dramatic shift in public awareness here of cocaine in the past week due to the recent deaths from the drug. The story now is the mounting evidence that cocaine use has indeed reached epidemic proportions, as the book said, that it’s crossing all social levels and professions and that it’s time we started taking it very seriously.

Suddenly the media — and everyone else — is waking up to what is going on around us every weekend. Last weekend, as preparations were made for French’s funeral, another two young men were in hospital after suspected drugs incidents.

What people here are now realizing is that this is going on all the time. It just took the death of a high profile person like French to wake us up to the fact. Now the media are on the case and all young adult deaths are being examined for a cocaine connection.

Part of the reason for the wave of revulsion about cocaine use that has swept the country in the past week has been the gruesome nature of the recent deaths.

French and the two young men in Waterford went from being healthy young adults to being in a coma in a matter of hours. They remained in a coma and were on life support machines for days before eventually dying.

The drawn out agony for the families made it an even bigger story. That and the speed with which something like this could happen.

A few days before French’s collapse the media had covered her glitzy 24th birthday party in a Dublin nightclub at which she arrived in a shimmering gold dress and a Rolls Royce. She had recently been part of a TV reality show and had appeared on TV chat shows after that.

She was a model who was famous for wanting to be famous. A year ago she had split from her restaurant-owning fiancé because he objected to her doing lingerie modeling. That had put her in all the social columns and magazines, although some suspected the whole thing may have been a publicity stunt.

She had invited some A-list stars like Bono to her 24th birthday party just over a week ago, but they didn’t show and this had attracted some unfavorable comment in the gossip columns. She was so desperate to be famous that she was easy to make fun of.

And yet her TV appearances and her evident sense of humor about herself meant that many people here not only knew who she was but liked her. She was not the top model here for fashion shows, but she was easily the most high profile among this year’s crop of leading models.

And she made no secret of her ambition to move beyond shoots and catwalks into general TV presentation. That was the reason for her publicity seeking, and she was intelligent enough to make it happen.

She may have been too much a reflection of the celebrity obsessed, money driven Celtic Tiger culture. But she was fun. In retrospect her death seems such a tragic waste.

A major Garda (police) investigation is now underway into the last few days of her life and particularly the last 24 hours. A preliminary examination by the state pathologist showed that she died of brain damage and had traces of cocaine in her system. But a complete explanation of how she died will not be available until toxicology samples have been analyzed.

In the meantime, some front line medical staff who deal with the cocaine epidemic here have been talking about what they face on a weekly basis. The accident and emergency consultant at a leading Cork hospital was on radio saying that at least six young adults have died there this year from the effects of cocaine.

He said that every weekend now they see young adults who are brought in with problems that include everything from breathing difficulties, seizures, panic attacks, violent paranoia, to even strokes and heart attacks, all triggered by cocaine use.

One thing that is clear is that we have a particular problem here because of the culture of weekend binge drinking. This leads to a lack of judgment when the drinking session is followed by cocaine and too much of the drug can be taken.

Katy French’s death is a tragedy ... but something good could result if it leads to increased monitoring of unexplained young adult traumas and deaths here. If that happens we might get a true picture of how bad cocaine use here really is.

And if that happens, it might become more of a priority for the authorities. At present we have less than 40 Gardai in the drugs unit across the whole country, we have inadequate resources to stop smuggling and the war against the drug dealers is being lost.

But apart from limiting supply, we will really only win the war by reducing demand, and that means scaring all those nice middle class people who are abusing the drug at present here. Random car checks using sniffer dogs should be introduced, with immediate confiscation of a vehicle for testing if there is a reaction. We breathalyze people all the time for alcohol at car checkpoints, and this could be done at the same time.

Even better would be a regular examination of leading bars and nightclubs, with instant closure of the premises if any traces are found on table tops, toilet seat lids, etc. That would make the owners a lot more vigilant than they are now. It seems strange that we have a small army of pub inspectors looking for smokers, but no one looking for cocaine.

The cocaine epidemic is all a factor of our Celtic Tiger wealth, of course. But even if the money flow slows, we will be left with the problem.

Hopefully we will all wake up before there are too many other young deaths, like that of Katy French.

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