Families being forced to allow drug dealing in their own homes

A Cavan drug and alcohol addiction service has expressed mounting concern at the “brazen” and often increasingly aggressive tactics taken by drug dealers to rope former addicts back into an exploitative and potentially lethal cycle of substance abuse.

Reports of addicts being threatened at knifepoint or with serious physical violence are understood to be on the rise.
Also to emerge is a growing awareness that families of addicts are being forced to meet the debts of struggling loved ones by holding drugs or even allowing shady deals in their homes.
Cavan Drug and Alcohol Services (CDA) and Gardai in Cavan and Monaghan are understood to have knowledge of the growing threat.
“We're aware of families around the county dealing with brazen drug related intimidation,” explains Tim Murphy, project supervisor at CDA.
“The way they do this is they get in, and when people refuse, they simply tell them 'well we're coming back in a week to get our €500 or whatever and we don't care how you get it'.”
It comes as Cavan and the surrounding Border region battles an influx of newly manufactured and highly addictive substances, some of which have been linked to overdose among users.
To further complicate matters, the prevalence of cocaine and the more dangerous crack-cocaine has also increased.
The discovery of a 'Crystal Meth Lab' in Dublin last week following the search of a premises in the Walkinstown area therefore came as no surprise to Mr Murphy.
Closer to home, an intelligence raid on a house in the Cavan Town area by the Cavan-Monaghan Divisional Drugs Unit led to the discovery of several hundred euros worth of cannabis.
“It's pretty crazy out there. It's not quite Armageddon around the corner, but we're seeing strange things coming up all the time in our tests,” admits Mr Murphy, whose group is preparing to publish their Annual Report for 2017 in the coming weeks.
One such drug gaining traction among vulnerable users of all ages is a drug called 'Xanax Sticks'.
Similar to the prescribed benzodiazepine, used to treat anxiety and panic disorders, these longer stick-shaped tablets have tested positive for opiate content, closer to morphine or codeine.
The drug has given rise to difficulties among recovering drug addicts attending the CDA service.
Some heroin users, for example, who have been clean for sometime, are suddenly testing positive for opiates and that has been attributed in some cases to taking these illicit form of so-called 'Xanax' pills.
“If there is a link, and that is the case, then it makes [these pills] very dangerous.
It just seems to be everything and anything at the minute.
So it appears that it's becoming more and more difficult to stay drug free,” Mr Murphy tells The Anglo-Celt.
The result, he and his team believe has, over the last 12 months, contributed not only an increase in drug use, but a “physical decline” in the appearance of several of their service users.
“The supply seems never-ending, always changing. There is no guarantee in what users are buying and the fallout from that is definitely getting more and more complex to deal with."