“That ‘free’ bag of drugs will be the costliest thing you will ever get”.
That’s the warning to young people from Aontú Senator Sarah O’ Reilly who has spoken of her worry and deep fear for young people when they are out and about socialising in Cavan Monaghan such is the proliferation of drugs in the constituency.
Aontú’s Sarah O’ Reilly says
“There isn’t a village in the area that is immune to the scourge of drugs. Like all parents I am really worried about young people who are trying to find their way as they are so vulnerable to the huge peer pressure to try drugs.
They are literally being bombarded with the relentless temptation that’s around.
Young people who don’t do drugs are made to feel like they are weird by their peers in this day and age. Drugs are normalised to the same extent as alcohol in some places.
This is deadly dangerous.
We urgently need to educate our youth on the horrific process of drug production and sale. The chain of crime, the torture, the murders and the lives ruined along the way are all part of the chain of death that goes towards the production of those little bags of drugs people are offered on nights out. So often young people are offered them for free , to try them but that ‘free bag of drugs’ will be the costliest thing they will ever take
We all know the horrific tales of families who are targeted to pay off the drug debts of their sons and daughters’ drug debts.
In some cases, there are young people who have emigrated without paying their debts and their grandparents are being burgled as a means of recouping the debt. It’s a horrific situation and it’s gone out of control.
It’s a debt that often people pay with their lives.
Drugs are being used by people of all ages, across all regions in the country and from all social classes. It has been completely normalised. As a mother I’m paranoid about the temptation my young lads face on nights out, and how do I protect them.
In the past ten years there have been over 11,000 arrests for drug offences across counties Cavan, Monaghan and Louth. The figures, released to Aontú under a Parliamentary Question show that drug arrests peaked in my constituency in 2020, and have dropped off since then.
But I firmly believe that while arrests may be down, drug use and drug dealing feels like it’s on the up.
1,410 babies were born addicted to drugs between 2011 and 2023 in this country. That is an incredibly sad statistic, which shows just how much drugs can destroy lives.
“We have other problems too in terms of the resale of prescription meds such as Valium. It’s very worrying to think something prescribed in good faith by doctors is being recycled in this way. I firmly believe that the odd shipment of drugs which gets caught is only the tip of the iceberg.
I’m not sure if any country has really cracked the drug problem – either through decriminalisation or otherwise – Just look at Portugal, there numbers went down after decriminalising, and now the numbers of users are skyrocketing in recent years, it just seems to be getting worse everywhere.
We need harsher sentences for those dealing drugs, we need it to be made a stand-alone offence to seek to recoup drug debts from innocent relatives.
Legalising drugs is not the answer, and I hope we can debate the matter thoroughly in this house and review all the international evidence for ourselves.
