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The Other Pandemic - Cocaine

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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,243 ✭✭✭✭Arghus


    I've taken it a handful of times over the years, mainly at the tail end of a night when my decision making was at a low ebb. I can see the appeal.

    It's been a while at this stage and I can't see myself using it again anytime soon to be honest. Though I don't really judge people if they decide to take it, I'd have a very lonely life if I did, considering that it seems to be used by all sorts. There's no real stereotypical coke user - it cuts across all social groups.

    There's a few things that turn me off. I don't like the experience of snorting things, the physical sensation of powder going up my nose. I'd also be afraid with enough practice I'd like it too much, I've seen it happen to people and that's something I want to stay away from.

    And also, for me, there is a sordidness to it. If people want to take coke that's their business and I won't stop them, but there is the murkiness linked to where it comes from, who benefits from it and the associated misery and mayhem that exists because of that. I guess some people can point at the attitude of the law as being the root cause - there's undoubtedly some truth to that - but I think that's an easy moral justification that I, personally, can't use to write off my own tiny contributing factor as an end user.

    It's a fact that some scumbags are getting rich and others are getting dead indirectly bringing these drugs to me and other people like me - all so we can have a cracking night out. I find the argument that it's the laws fault to be morally tenuous and doesn't stack up considering that we all know where these drugs come from and what we as consumers make a free choice to contribute to. I don't feel comfortable with the thought of lining the wallets of these people. I know of people who are big into political causes, ethically sourced goods and foods, but yet don't bat an eye at where their drugs come from. I find that depressing.

    Post edited by Arghus on


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,034 ✭✭✭Jequ0n


    Sometimes I almost pity people who allow their lives to be restricted just because someone else decreed something. But each to their own.



  • Registered Users Posts: 11,143 ✭✭✭✭B.A._Baracus


    Only an idiot does cocaine.

    ... and i've heard all the retorts before like Do you like a drink? do you like coffee? there's a big difference between a brewery like Guiness, which you can visit! :p and going to some cocaine farm hidden in the jungle of Columbia. Where the farmer adds kerosene, bleach and other mad chemicals to break down the coca leaf to make the cocaine paste. Then the cartels add their own garbage to make the powder. Then it gets cut with what only what down all the supply-chain before it goes up your nose.

    I'll stick with a can of guiness and a cup of coffee any day thank you very much lol.



  • Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 12,467 Mod ✭✭✭✭JupiterKid


    I've never touched cocaine (many times been offered it over the years) and I probably never will, but to those who say that coke users - the tens of millions of them worldwide - are funding/turning a blind eye to drug gangs, shootings, massacres, torture, forced labour, intimidation, etc - these unsavoury things are taking place because the drug is illegal.

    Drug prohibition has utterly failed and has only caused more problems than it was intended to solve. It is a Victorian morality mindset that cannot and will not accept that people do things with their bodies and lives that they themselves do not - or do privately in contrast to their hypocritical public stances.


    Drugs prohibition has no place in the 21st Century.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,314 ✭✭✭paw patrol


    we are all one society all interconnected? Sound a bit like collectivism to me which isn't for me.

    I'm happy for others to do their thing and if something bothers me I'll try fix it,



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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,243 ✭✭✭✭Arghus


    I understand and agree with a lot of what you have to say.

    I fully agree that the fundamentals of why drugs and crime are interlinked is mainly down to the illegality and prohibition of drugs in the first place, of course.

    But nonetheless those unsavoury things are still taking place and we know they are, we can't plead ignorance.

    And while there's deeper, systematic reasons underpinning why this is all taking place in the first place that is, in real terms, removed from the action of individuals to a large extent.

    As a consumer you are still knowingly contributing to the continuing unsavoury aspects of it all, that's where you, as a free individual, make a choice and can exercise agency.

    As a consumer, when you buy a bag, your money is going to filter through the system filled with unsavoury characters and deeds - whatever about the deeper fundamental truthes about why that system exists as it does in the first place, in real terms you're still making a decision - with that knowledge - that helps all of that thrive, today in the here and now. I think that is turning a blind eye to be honest.

    I know this exists firstly because of the war in drugs which has allowed this economy to develop, but I also know, despite that, that my money feeds the beast and indirectly helps propagate all those unsavoury aspects you mentioned. I can abstractly bemoan the state of affairs, or I can choose to not play a part.

    Post edited by Arghus on


  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    More absolute nonsense, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. You need a history lesson mate, look at the slavery and working conditions people suffered in during the prohibition period of alcohol.

    this comes back to my previous post, none of the above would be an issue if it wasn’t for a failed war on drugs.

    drugs will always be in demand, people will use them (alcohol is also considered a drug,) how we fix the issue is legalisation, education and supporting people who are troubled with it - not convicting them.

    take a look at Portugal for example who have done exactly this. Crime has dropped as has addiction issues. Instead of blaming the average Joe soap who does a bump every few weeks, why not take a look at the legislations and comparisons to other countries before pointing the finger.



  • Registered Users Posts: 11,143 ✭✭✭✭B.A._Baracus


    lol. You say I "clearly have no idea what I am talking about" then show you are living on another planet lol.

    Think what you want to think mate. I'm out. My sanity is not worth engaging with you.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,082 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    you seem to have missed the point but only caring about yourself is a fairly well established side effect of long term cocaine use you know


    what if something your doing effects or bothers some one else ?



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah




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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,014 ✭✭✭MacronvFrugals


    I recommend this book for a look at some horror stories of coke use in Ireland, it’s stories taken from patients in the Rutland centre in South Dublin.

    It was written at the height of the last boom and imo things are much worse today!




  • Registered Users Posts: 11,143 ✭✭✭✭B.A._Baracus


    I want you to read this bit carefully... I don't give a flying f**k what you think. I know what you are. So go off on a mad one with some other ejjit. I wont be the one.

    Cheers.



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    Intellectual, articulate and factual consensus right there, mate. The only eejit here is you - you proved it yourself (saved me the bother lol)

    Cheers



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    Excellent post.

    By legalising drugs, we treat the people affected by them as healthcare patients (it’s ironic considering the title of the thread.)

    in doing so, they are not integrated back into society until they are helped. Portugal is the best example and Norway have since followed suit.

    These people are sick and they should be helped/treated. It took this country many years to adjust the stigma related to mental health and we still don’t fund it or barely even recognise it as health issue. It will be a long time before we recognise drug addiction as the same, not all drug addicts are scumbags. It’s a disgrace for people to refer to them as that without fully understanding the root cause of the issue and accepting our approach via prohibition is only going to make it worse.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,639 ✭✭✭buried


    "You have disgraced yourselves again" - W. B. Yeats



  • Registered Users Posts: 11,143 ✭✭✭✭B.A._Baracus




  • Registered Users Posts: 530 ✭✭✭GNWoodd


    What I find amazing is the difference in how various wrongs are treated by the law . Middle aged men and women drinking a few pints in a controlled environment and driving home afterwards results in the law being changed to disqualify a driver even marginally over the limit .

    Yet last nights programme showed fixes of coke or heroin being extracted from a dealers nether regions and being sold in broad daylight while those tasked with law enforcement cycle by and do nothing

    You couldn’t make it up



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,765 ✭✭✭✭Potential-Monke


    What I find amazing is how everyone is a legal expert when it comes to these things. Example above, drugs being sold and Gardai cycling by and doing nothing. No mention of probable cause backed up by hard evidence. Every Garda knows who's selling, but proving it is another thing. The days of randomly searching someone who looks like they could be dealing are gone, thanks to successful discriminatory cases changing the law (not specifically in Ireland, but we copy others). And then it goes into the roundabout argument that involved more guards for somehow less money, and on.

    If the law was that easy to enforce, it would be done. Fact is, the law is making it harder and harder to secure convictions. Ireland has gone a bit too far on the ridiculous side that forgetting to say "a public place" after "O'Connell Street, Dublin" could cause a cause to be thrown out. People are too caught up with the Hollywood idealization of how investigations legally work.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,436 ✭✭✭dartboardio


    Ah.. Cocaine. An awful habit, or addiction to have.


    To those saying only scumbags take it, open your eyes a little bit.


    Cocaine is an expensive drug, in fact any of my peers or friends over the years who liked it a bit more than the odd night out and developed addictions were all quite well off people with parents that had high paying jobs, and lived in big houses, studied physics or medicine etc in college, you get the idea...


    However like any drug, or habit, it's all down to environment. It's too easy to get caught up hanging around with the same people week in week out, going on the same types of nights out where they become dependent on getting an oul bag or two rather than enjoying a few drinks, I've been there myself but luckily don't really have an addictive personality.


    I've seen people ruined by it, and have had a cousin who's a great guy, extremely intelligent but kept in with the same crowd who all are borderline coke addicts, and have been doing the same thing for years.


    He was even selling large amounts of it at one stage to keep up his habit and I remember him telling me on a night out one time he was really struggling, and he kept finding himself taking it alone in his bedroom after a night out staring at the ceiling.

    He eventually bit the bullet and moved away to central Europe to go to college, no longer associating with that lifestyle or those friends, while the friends are still doing the same thing day in day out.



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    The people referring to cocaine users as scumbags don’t deserve any sort of acknowledgment or reasoning - it’s simply untrue.

    As you correctly mentioned, cocaine is an expensive drug and it’s increase in usage is in the middle to upper class of individuals.

    I work in the tech sector and it is rampant. In fact my previous employer (a very well known tech company with offices on the canal,) hired most academics graduating from the likes of UCD, TCD etc - all young people from fairly decent backgrounds with private education. These specific individuals in my opinion are the biggest users of it, they have money, they see cocaine as a “status drug,” if you use it - you are well off.

    I’ve seen people in that professional aspect lose the run of themselves on it but you can nearly tell who these people will be without even knowing they have an issue. Generally compulsive individuals and they tend to find one another which ultimately leads to the addiction in circles that you reference.

    At my first xmas party with said company, I was offered cocaine by a Vice President (who managed an org/dept of between 300-400 people,) i thought it was a joke at first but I came to realise that they all use it.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 530 ✭✭✭GNWoodd



    Then what were the Gardaí doing there in the first place ? Cycling past a known crime scene , doing nothing , and being laughed at ? Could they not at least make it difficult for those dealing ?

    They have plenty of resources to drive around rural areas at night trying to catch a few motorists that might have drank a few pints .



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,082 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    ya you always see large numbers of well resourced gardai wandering country lanes in high end flashy cars and with massive state and legal support just to arrest poor old uncle jim who had two pints.


    Man who had 18 callers to his home for cocaine while gardaí were searching it avoids jail - Independent.ie


    career criminal caught with drugs money and had previous for drugs but gets off scot free thanks to the legal aid you paid for



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    Explain to me.

    Do you think this individual in question would come out of prison better or worse?



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,082 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    i dont care if he does he is 42 and has been a criminal all his life.

    at this stage its about protecting other people from him , and not just his drug dealing enterprises



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    ”protecting other people from him,” won’t be achieved by putting someone like him in prison mate. The demand is there, someone will always supply it

    the amount he was carrying too is buttons and likely seen as a waste of jail space. Fair enough it’s not right to have someone like him on the streets but removing him from it won’t fix the issue

    In a way it’s a positive approach by the Garda, decriminalisation is the only way.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭mohawk


    I find the cokeheads in the local to be a pain in the arse. The mix of alcohol and cocaine doesn’t seem to suit many. Whole friend groups use it and go to bathroom in numbers to get high.

    Personally, I have never done it. What assurances do I have if what’s in it and that it’s not contaminated. Yeah I drink when I go out, but the drinks industry is regulated. I know what I am getting

    Perhaps, if it wasn’t illegal there could be places for the cocaine users to go and get high there and leave rest of us enjoy a couple drinks in the pub

    The war on drugs has massively failed. However, my other reason for not trying it is I wouldn’t want to give the career criminals a cent of my money. You know the type getting young lads to do the dirty work for them, ordering murders, destroying their communities etc.



  • Registered Users Posts: 710 ✭✭✭TefalBrain



    Cocaine users don't tend to be the most intelligent in fairness. "Here's some white powder that may have made it's way into the country in someone's arse passage" "Oh yeah sound man that sounds deadly"



  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    And this is why we need to demystify the social imaginary that demonizes the chemically dependent, being thus important to develop public policies with actions focused on health, prevention, information and combat to stigma.

    stigma does not help the vulnerable get better. You don’t know what people are going through that lead them to using drugs.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,082 ✭✭✭mikethecop


    Aw right so you know what other crimes he has committed do ya ? what all those other convictions are for ?



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  • Registered Users Posts: 795 ✭✭✭Relax brah


    More than 70% of substance dependant people have suffered severe trauma in life - some may have been abused, raped etc

    Until you have experienced such horrific ordeals or drama you cannot comment on people who are self medicating them because the state has failed.

    Its not an excuse for criminality, these people are sick and in many countries around the world treated as patients. We treat them as criminals, lock them up and they come out worse - many now the state has just given up on that basis?

    The only fix is decriminalisation.



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