Drogheda’s garda chief has warned of a massive cocaine problem in Ireland among young people.
Garda chief Christy Mangan has also said that the current problem with Drogheda’s drug gangs could happen in any Irish town.
He said that the rise in cocaine usage among young people needs to be treated as a national health problem and believes that it is worse than the heroin epidemic.
An additional 30 Gardaí have been placed in Louth in order to assist in reducing the violence and gangland activities there.
Teenager arrested after gardai seize cocaine and cannabis worth €42,000 in Drogheda, Co Louth
Mangan said: “The feud in Drogheda, like all the other feuds, is about turf and money and that is fuelled by the demand for cocaine, which, unlike heroin, knows no social divide.
“The country is loaded with cocaine. The dealers are benefiting from their bread and butter, which are the people who use it all the time and then the bumper weekends where everyone from sports people to workers are out buying it for so-called ‘recreational use’. This is doubling the dealer’s money.”
Mangan has said that in his time as garda chief and working in the Garda’s National Drugs Unit he has never seen a drug be so normalised in society.
He added: “This is a national problem and if we don’t act as a group with health practitioners and reduce that demand we will lose a generation of young people. This is very, very serious”
