SUE THE DEALERS JUST LIKE THE CIG COMPANIES

Joe Macanthony On A Way To Make Drug Barons Pay For Their Crimes

LAST week's award of $3 billion in damages against the Philip Morris
tobacco company for causing cancer in 56-year-old Richard Boeken raises the
inevitable question. Why can't the same approach be taken and similar
damages be sought from our latterday drug dealers?

The evidence against them in Ireland is more compelling in the immediate
damage than that marshalled against the tobacco companies in the United
States. Our drug traders have created over 13,000 heroin addicts in Dublin
alone, with up to 1,000 new ones appearing each year. The inner south city
has an addiction rate among 15-to-24-year-olds the worst in Europe. Half of
the Republic's prison population is addicted to drugs; over 80 per cent
test positive to hepatitis C.

The price of dealing with a disaster of this magnitude in remedial health
care and increasingly expensive prevention could run as high as pounds 100
million. Certainly, there is an increasingly organised response by health
professionals, social workers and activists to the continuing damage being
done. The gardai, too, appear to be having greater success with
interdiction and convictions. And the Criminal Assets Bureau has seized
pounds 20m in cash and assets from major crime figures.

While this CAB success is clearly welcomed, some realistic points remain to
be made.

The first is that the pounds 20m yielded after five years of intense
activity still only equals the fortune amassed by John Gilligan believed to
be over pounds 14m and the suspected pounds 6m assets of one other
criminal. Clearly, there are millions still out there which the CAB has
neither the time nor resources to follow up on.

There also remains the worrying possibility that when the appeals against
the CAB seizures go to Europe, the bureau could be forced to hand back the
seized crime-related money to the drug dealers. Informed opinion considers
that a valid possibility which undoubtedly would have a devastating effect
on the morale of those working in law enforcement and the remedial field.

There may be a way to avoid that eventuality. But it would need energetic
action from our legislators, if it is to be ready in time to counter a
decision from Europe that favoured our drug lords.

As with the case pursued against Philip Morris, it would involve suing the
drug dealers for civil damages under a law similar to that recently passed
by the US House of Representatives. The Drug Dealers Liability Act is
designed to allow families, medical facilities treating drug users,
employers and even addicts themselves to sue drug dealers because of
physical or financial injury suffered as a result of drug dealers'
activities. One advantage the act has that improves on the CAB's powers is
that it allows seizure of assets including property, which normally escape
confiscation because they cannot be shown to be the proceeds of crime.

ALTHOUGH DDLA is in its infancy, one case before the courts has already
yielded damages of $268m against a dealer who sold metamphetamines to a
driver who subsequently killed a couple in a road accident. In another
case, representatives of a baby, Felicia Brown, who was beaten to death
with a hammer by her mother after she had used cocaine, sued a dealer with
property and a legitimate business along with three others. That case is
still before the courts.

The Drug Dealers Liability Act, promoted by the actor Carroll O'Connor,
whose son, a heroin addict, committed suicide, has its drawbacks, the
primary one being that getting a civil damage award out of a dealer would
be akin to getting blood out of a stone. But that would not be the case
here, with the CAB holding millions of pounds from drug dealers, and likely
much more before an appeals decision comes down from a European court. All
of which might be handed over in a civil award to treatment clinics or
others through the legal process.

At present, the depressing news on the drug front is that a smart young
non-drug-user has now taken over John Gilligan's territory, spreading the
same rotten depredation as he accumulates millions.

For all that, we could still, with the will first born from outrage over
Veronica Guerin's murder, renew the battle with greater fire and try to
give relief to those in the community who remain the drug dealers'
principal victims.

"Families should not have to solely bear the financial burden resulting
from drug-related injuries," Aline Frescia said as her Drug Dealer's
Liability measure passed in the New Jersey Assembly last October. "The
ability to sue these purveyors of poison will ease the burden by making
drug dealers pay."

There ought to be enough people in the Dail to make them pay here too.