COKE NATION

Inside cocaine’s rapid rise to Ireland’s drug of choice as country ranks top of EU ‘Devil’s Dandruff’ usage list

• Published: 7:00, 21 Aug 2023
• Updated: 7:59, 21 Aug 2023

BY the time supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne was busted for snorting cocaine with a sex worker in 1992, the Irish public were getting to grips with the designer drug.

First acknowledged in 1968 as easier to get in Ireland than the UK, coke slowly emerged as the “yuppie” narcotic of choice here before exploding into mainstream use as supply soared and prices tumbled.

High-profile court cases in the 1980’s and 90’s woke the nation up to the problem of the ‘Devil’s Dandruff’ before the Dunnes Stores supremo’s Florida trip seared it into the collective conscience.

By then, prolific — and usually wealthy — users couldn’t get enough of the drug, and the public became hooked on the coverage.

Three decades later, Ireland has the EU’s highest rate of use.

More than three in five people seeking drug treatment are in for cocaine — and it didn’t take long for Ireland to become addicted.

In 1967, a Garda came across some young people unconscious on the street.

Their condition was soon linked to a “drugs racket” and from this the Drug Squad was born.

Christopher O’Connor, from the College of Pharmacy, declared in 1969 that Ireland had a drug problem, as youngsters tiring of hash moved on to cocaine and heroin.

He said: “I hope that the new Drugs Advisory Council will be able to prevent the problem becoming a serious one in Ireland.” It wasn’t

In December 1969, RTE carried a report in which Anne, who got her first injection at 15 after finding out about drugs in boarding school and getting in to heroin and cocaine, said getting them in Dublin was “easy as buying sweets”.

The Drug Squad at this point was made up of four Gardai and a sergeant.

Trinity College boffin Cedric Wilson claimed: “There are people actually coming here from England because it is easy to get heroin and cocaine.”

But it was still small time compared to what it would become.

In 1970 just seven people were before the courts on cocaine charges, while in one month in 1975 only two cocaine users were attending the Drug Advisory Centre.

POP CULTURE & BALLADS BLAMED

In 1976 Major Geoffrey Brabazon Gibbon, a former captain of the English equestrian team, was fined £400 for possessing and supplying coke in the capital.

And in 1980, the nation was stunned when 30-year-old Gerard Cronin from Clontarf, Dublin, died and four friends needed treatment after they sniffed strychnine bought in a pub beside Trinity College believing it to be coke.

Fine Gael’s youth affairs spokesman Enda Kenny slammed drug pushing as “murder for money”.

The following year, when experts at the Jervis Street Drugs Centre revealed cocaine was now flooding the Dublin market, Cardinal Tomas O’Fiaich suggested that “pop culture and Irish drinking ballads might be to blame for a good deal of drugs abuse here”.

Gardai setup regional drug squads to cope.

In 1981, Dr Desmond Corrigan from Trinity College advised frantic parents: “It is often claimed that drug use is a sign of rebellion.

“If this is the case, let them buy outlandish clothes, and dye their hair green if they want to, and never mind what the neighbours say.”

Gardai seized 82 grams of the drug in 1981 and 95 grams in 1983 when 23 people were charged with a cocaine offence.

It didn’t yet come close to the heroin problem, responsible for over 450 arrests in 1983 and seizures of 1,379 grams.

But it also showed the Gardai had not yet learned how to deal with it, with one person telling a newspaper that smuggling the drug into Ireland was no more difficult than bringing your luggage or wallet.

The typical user and dealer was “middle class”, most likely never having faced charges more serious than a parking ticket.

In 1984, with coke selling at £300 a gram, the typical Irish user was described as “young and moneyed” with a “dynamic, prestigious job for which cocaine is suited”.

In Dublin magazine interviewed Johnny, a well-known figure in the broadcasting world and dealer to the stars.

He told them: “I don’t think there are any big time importers in this country. It’s more a case of, y’know, a friend of yours is going over to London and he brings back a few grams and you buy from him.”

Johnny, who believed that this ensured greater quality control, went on to explain that music tour organisers even factored the cost of Charlie into their budgets.

He said: “If a top Irish band ran out of coke on the road, they’d send a van back to Dublin to get some more.”

Slane supremo Lord Henry Mountcharles insisted in 1983 that drugs cases wouldn’t stop concerts at the Co Meath venue after 70 Rolling Stones giggoers appeared on drugs charges at Navan Court — some of which involved cocaine.

Seizures soared to 293 grams in 1985, more than twice the previous years combined, amid warnings  cocaine addicts would overwhelm drug treatment centres in the next 12 months.

One haul in November, at that point was the largest ever, prompted Drug Squad boss Det Insp John McGroarty to warn: “The seizure may be the first significant indication that the drug’s use is on the rise in Ireland.”

Dublin dealer Larry Dunne was caged for 14 years in May 1985 for possessing heroin, cocaine and cannabis to supply, the first significant term handed down for a narcotics Godfather.

And in January 1986, Thin Lizzy superstar Phil Lynott died with cocaine on his person.

By then Ireland’s middle class had become the new target for international drugs cartels.

The Drug Squad warned that an over-supply in South America prompted traffickers to turn their attentions here — revealing that hundreds of tons of low-priced coke was being stockpiled ready for distribution.

One detective warned the High Court that our courts were seen as “soft touches”, leaving us at the mercy of dealers.

By now, high-profile court cases were beginning to tell more of the story.

A €17,000-a-year advertising executive from Monkstown in Dublin, was jailed for four years for possession, after he was lifted during a raid on Shrimp’s wine bar.

The trial judge said: “I cannot close my eyes to the appalling damage drug-taking is doing to decent, respectable people.”

‘SLOWER ACTING POISON THAN HEROINE’

A 36-year-old Belfast businessman was fined £1,000 by a Dublin court in 1987 after pleading guilty to possession of cannabis and cocaine at the Gresham Hotel.

The man took responsibility for the cannabis but told Gardai he received the coke from “a bird who was there the night before”.

Gardai battle-hardened by the war on heroin knew that cocaine posed different, more upmarket, problems for them.

Supt Dennis Mullins warned in 1986: “The curse . . . is that people believe it’s non-addictive.

The champagne image is reinforced with . . . gold boxes and silver snorters.

“Yet the evidence from the US is there have been more gangster incidents in relation to getting control of cocaine than there has been in heroin.

“It may be a slower acting poison but it will ruin the person using it all the same.”

In 1986, an European Economic Community report warned Ireland faced “an unprecedented drug abuse problem” with cocaine poised to knock heroin off its perch over the coming decade just as it took a hold on the US.

By the late 1980’s, the drug was no longer the preserve of the rich set with Interpol warning that Europe was facing the largest importation of illegal drugs in history.

Dealers were getting twice the going US rate per gram in Europe, but prices were falling sharply  from the jet set early days.

As the decade went on, prices fell from an average of up to £500 a gram in 1982 to £150 in 1986 and £100 in 1988.

Couriers were finding newer ways to get coke in, including soaking it into clothing so as to make it almost undetectable.

Fine Gael TD Gay Mitchell warned in 1988 that cocaine may turn 5,000 people into “zombies” — on a par with the heroin crisis, as barons looked to get their claws in.

He believed drug abuse — a £20million racket in 1982 — would soon become a £100million business.

In 1989, a £1million coke bust on a ship in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork — bound for Holland — became Ireland’s biggest ever.

Despite this, Junior Health Minister Noel Treacy told a world ministerial drugs conference in 1990 that drug trafficking had levelled off in Ireland, where no “Godfathers” existed any more.

DUNNE’S BINGE

In February 1992, Ben Dunne sparked a frenzy when found in a state of paranoid undress by US cops at Florida’s Hyatt Grand Cypress Hotel.

Hooker Denise Wojcik, 22, told how her “Escorts of the Flesh” agency was paid $300 before she went to Dunne’s luxury 17th floor suite, quaffed champagne and snorted 20 to 25 lines of coke with the businessman.

He gave her a $400 tip, had a bath and chopped up cocaine from a stash of 32 grams using his K Club membership card.

But his inability to open a wall safe sparked an anxiety attack and dressed only in his underpants he began swinging a block of wood over his head.

A visit from hotel security spooked him further, and he walked over to the balcony, peering down 17 floors to the lobby where U2’s Bono just happened to be standing, watching all the chaos.

Cops arrived, talked Dunne down, and tied him to a pole.

A few days later with the story dominating national headlines, Dunne decided to do an interview with RTE, telling them: “I can blame nobody but myself.”

But while everyone wanted to know what Dunne was snorting, any sins of the flesh were off limits. 

RTE was flooded with a record number of complaints for what it probably thought was the scoop of the year, a chat with Ms Wojcik.
Today Tonight supremo Peter Feeney said: “I am a bit bewildered by all the viewer reaction.

“One of the things I have learned from this is that middle Ireland never wants to talk about its sex life.”

Charged in Orlando with trafficking in cocaine and possession of the controlled drug, Dunne was dramatically let off with 28 days at a London drug treatment unit and a $5,000 fine a month before he was due to stand trial.

PARTY’S ONLY STARTED

Ben said: “I wanted to be sentenced and sentenced fast. I was facing three years in jail. Thank God it wasn’t in Singapore or somewhere like that. I’d be facing death, not just jail.”

In 1993, gangster Eamon Kelly — who was murdered in 2012 — was jailed for 14 years for his part in a £500,000 seizure.

In 1996, around £190 million worth of cocaine was found on board the Sea Mist trawler in Cork Harbour.

By 1997, the white powder became more than just a weekend recreational drug for hot shots. 

Prices plummeted to as little as £50 a gram because users had begun turning their backs on ecstasy which by 1997 had killed 17 people in Ireland.

Crime gangs began using Ireland as a back-door route into Europe, its rugged coastline a particular attraction.

It was reported in the media that South American drug cartels were looking to site  secret underwater storage depots along Ireland’s west coast.

Over the course of eight weeks in 1999, £5 million worth of cocaine being shipped through Ireland to the UK and Europe was intercepted by Gardai.

In 1998, gardai warned of a looming crack-cocaine epidemic while the following year the skipper of a yacht carrying £40 million worth of cocaine into Kinsale, Co Cork, was jailed.

Bynowcocainewasthenew “teen chic” drug —the Celtic Tiger boom seeing a 30-fold increase in seizures from 11kgin 1997to333kg.

Ireland was by now also at the centre of the entertainment universe.

Gardai believed that part of a £1 million haul seized at Dublin Airport in November 1999 was destined for private parties being organised around the MTV Music Awards which was being held in the capital.

With £60 million worth of seizures in less than a year, Ireland had by the turn of the Millennium the highest number of young cocaine users in Europe.

The party, such as it was, was only beginning.