Nobody in Cork is denying that heroin is gaining a steadier foothold in the city.
Gardaí, addiction workers, youth workers, social workers, city councillors: They all acknowledge it’s a growing issue, a problem that up until 2006/07 was rare, isolated, and relatively stagnant.
In recent weeks, the city’s leading garda blamed a significant rise in muggings and thefts in Cork city centre on heroin addicts desperately needing their next fix. Chief Superintendent Mick Finn told the October meeting of the Joint Policing Committee that these crimes were up by 41% between July and September compared with the year previous. There was “no doubt”, he said, this was linked to the increased use of heroin.
When it comes to heroin, local politicians tend to articulate the fears of a community, and fear is the operative word when it comes to heroin. More and more people are coming to city councillors incandescent about discarded needles, about users shooting up in public spaces. And then there are many older people, says Independent city councillor Mick Finn, “scared and intimidated by junkies, by how their street has changed, by what could happen”.
Two Cork mothers spoke in Part One of this series of how their sons’ lives collapsed within months of taking heroin regularly. “The speed of the deterioration, I couldn’t believe it,” said ‘Margaret’. Her son was only on heroin for six months before dealers attempted to pipe-bomb their house.
It’s when the user is evicted or when their parents can’t take any more that the addicts tend to arrive at the St Vincent de Paul or the Simon homeless shelter.
Cork Simon Community CEO Dermot Kavanagh says “the day has long passed” that alcohol was invariably the substance being abused by their clients in Cork.
“In the last several years, it’s opiates and polydrug use, and this has created challenges.
“There was a time when there was only a handful of opiate users in the city, maybe they did go to Limerick or Dublin for their heroin, but there have been very significant Garda seizures in recent years, one of €100,000, and if they’re supplying a local market, it suggests there is strong demand, which is unfortunate.”
Unlike elsewhere in the country, heroin only came to Cork recently. In the 1980s and 1990s, hash, ecstasy, and, latterly, cocaine were the illegal drugs most abused in Cork. It was said the local families that controlled Cork’s drug supply had forged a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to keep the city, unlike Dublin, heroin free. But users tell us the growing heroin market in Cork is now a free-for-all. “It’s all nations, everyone, every colour, black, white, Travellers the lot, they’re all selling,” says ‘Susan’.
The big fear in local communities and among youth and social workers is that if the growing problem isn’t tackled, it could explode, as happened with horrifying consequences in Dublin in the 1980s.
Source: Claire O'Sullivan, Irish Examiner, 19/11/13
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