New drugs hitting Irish streets follows international trends and the fears are very real.
A new cocktail of illicit drugs selling at €2 a stick is being sold on Irish streets and contains five hits in a new deadly threat aimed directly at school kids, gangland sources have told the Sunday World.
The sticks are already on sale on the streets of Limerick and follows the methamphetamine raids last week and the Sunday World expose of the trade with children as young as ten in Dublin last week.
Sources have told the Sunday World that the homemade sticks are have serrated edges and can be broken off into five pieces each promising a hit and which is sold at just €2 a go.
One child who nearly overdosed on one was found to have a range of illicit drugs inside him including traces of cocaine, heroin and prescribed drugs.
The new range of street drugs mimics the history of drug distribution and sale across the globe from Thailand to Australia and the US.
This reporter visited the meth labs in the Golden Triangle and saw swathes of Thai teenagers and young men use pill forms of methamphetamine called Yabba and it is now the main cause of crime in that region.
Made by rouge elements of the Burmese military, these pills came in their millions and were made on an industrial scale.
Pills were sold at little more that the price of a bar of chocolate and caused manic behaviour and sent crime and suicides rates soaring.
School-going children found themselves hospitalized as the pills often contained a range of poisonous substances and often ravaged the brain.
In South Africa, the home made pills and methamphetamine substance is called ‘Tik’and it too, has destroyed communities.
Introduced by Triad gangs who had imported the base drug used for its manufacture – ephedrine ( speed ) and sold Norinco 9mm guns with the shipments.
Local gangs like the Americans and the numbers gangs took up the trade and it has destroyed communities right across South Africa and resulted in a massive bump in the murder rates after a number of years of declining rates.
The appearance of the drug on Irish streets and the involvement of teenagers in its sale and distribution is a disturbing trend and the history of its introduction in Australia, Thailand and South Africa does not bode well.
Initially, the drug hit the gay scene in the UK a decade ago but it failed to take on in a big way but the Garda intervention last week gives at least some hope that it can be caught and curtailed before it spirals out of control.
