SICK REALITY OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED THAT COCAINE ON YOUR DINNER TABLE

There are no health or quality controls in the dirty and dangerous
business of cutting and transporting the supposed 'glamour drug',
writes Jim Cusack

WHEN a senior garda warned last week that there are no health or
quality controls on illegal drugs, he wasn't exaggerating. Assistant
Commissioner Martin Donnellan's warning followed the cocaine
poisoning of two men after a party in Waterford.

How drugs are cut and transported can involve appalling risks to
users. Small-time dealers often transport Class A drugs such as
cocaine and heroin in their rectums. In Dublin, in particular, most
of the couriers are heroin addicts and some are HIV positive.

There is worse. A few years ago in Crumlin, gardai stopped and
searched a heroin addict and HIV positive man who was in what can
only be described as an advanced state of decay, his body covered in
open sores. Though in a wheelchair, he still sold cocaine and heroin
daily to feed his ownhabit. Under a bandage on his leg, inside a
large suppurating sore, gardai found a package of cocaine wrapped in tinfoil.

These addicts are the street dealers who supply the relatively small
amounts of cocaine used by young people in bars and clubs. According
to garda sources, the cocaine ingested by the two Waterford men last
weekend was of an unusually high degree of purity. It appeared to
have been soaked at some stage -- possibly the bag containing it had
been either stored in a damp place or it might have been part of a
shipment dumped on the seabed for collection off shore by traffickers
and its waterproof covering damaged.

It was being swallowed in lumps, "like sugar cubes", according to one
source. Other drugs, including magic mushrooms, were also being
consumed at the party, gardai have learned. The lethal cocktail has
left both John Grey, 23, and Kevin Doyle, 21, in comas.

What happened in the "session house" in Waterford -- an open house
party known in Dublin as a "free gaff" -- can happen anywhere around
the country. People are taking drugs oblivious to the fact that they
are poisoning themselves in one way or another.

Cocaine tested at the Forensic Laboratory in Garda Headquarters has
produced alarming results. As well as the adulterants used to "cut"
the drug, faecal matter is also present. Two years ago a chemical
analysis of cocaine seized in Dublin found traces of the banned
analgesic, Phenacetin. This drug has been banned in Western countries
since it was found to cause cancer in animal trials. It is still
available, however, in Third World countries. The cocaine tested in
Dublin is believed to have been smuggled in by couriers arriving from Nigeria.

Since the Nineties, United States and European customs have been
scoring increasing successes against ships travelling from South
American ports carrying cocaine across the north Atlantic. To counter
this, the Colombian and other South American cocaine producers have
been using the south Atlantic to export their bulk product. It
arrives in West Africa and is transported from there by various
routes mostly to Spain or by courier to the countries of sale.

It is fairly well established that when the relatively pure cocaine
arrives in West Africa, and particularly, Nigeria, it undergoes the
first of a series of adulterations to increase the profits of the
traffickers. It is usually "cut" with inert white powders such as
glucose or chalk but the experience of the forensic lab tests in
Dublin show that other, more dangerous substances are added.
Phenacetin is used because it produces a euphoric effect quite
similar to that of cocaine.

When the drug arrives in Ireland -- generally dumped at sea from
ocean-going vessels and then collected by small boats using GPS
tracking systems to detect the packages -- it will be 'cut' again.
The 'pure' -- though almost certainly already cut -- cocaine is
ground down again into powder and, usually, bulked up by 50 per cent
in volume with glucose, the most common brand being Mannitol. The
producers and suppliers do tend to ensure that the product is, at
least, non fatal. On one or two occasions in the early Nineties, the
poison, strychnine, was discovered in heroin but this was an
aberration -- it is in no one's financial interests to actually kill
the customer.

It is next sold to the mid-range suppliers who buy it at maybe 20 or
30 kilos a time and, again, they will also "cut" it. By the time it
is sold to the next layer of dealers, who will probably buy a single
kilo a time, its purity level has been greatly reduced. Inevitably,
these will also make a further cut. At this level, the supplier is
buying a kilo of cocaine for around €30,000 and selling it for
€60,000, such is the profitability in this trade.

The next link in the chain is those who sell to the addicts who then
transport the drug at maybe an ounce at a time to pubs, clubs and
parties. The drug is now wrapped in clingfilm and concealed inside
the addicts' bodies -- usually pushed up their rectums. These people
are generally heroin addicts but an increasing number are crack
cocaine addicts. A proportion will be HIV positive or suffer from one
or other of the many infectious diseases associated with intravenous drug use.

The heroin trade at this level is even worse. Heroin is transported
into Dublin city centre -- again inside rectums or vaginas -- and is
then split up into pea-sized "bags" which are carried in the addict's
mouth so they can be swallowed or spat out if the courier is stopped
by gardai. At no stage are there any quality or health-related
controls in the production, transportation or supply of cocaine or heroin.

From the point of harvesting in the South American Andean region
where the coca plant thrives, the drug is adulterated by pesticides
and insecticides, many of which are banned in the West. For the
environmentally conscious, it should be pointed out that most coca
plants are genetically modified to increase cocaine yield.

The dried leaves are then synthesised into a paste by being submerged
in kerosene and finally acid to separate the "pure" powder. All this
is done in what are termed factories but are really makeshift
chemical plants with no health or safety regulations in the jungle
open to pest infection and bird or bat droppings.

A very high proportion of cocaine reaching the West is also made
under the control of the narco-terrorist Farc rebels in Colombia--
the same group which paid the IRA a reputed US$28m for training it in
the use of mortar bombs. The peasant farmers who grow the plants for
Farc are effectively enslaved -- forced to stop other legitimate
forms of agriculture to produce the drug.

When cocaine started arriving in Ireland in the Seventies, it was
usually handled by young drug entrepreneurs often of the same social
background as the middle class "yuppies" who consumed the drug. In
the Seventies and Eighties, when cocaine was rare, it was almost
exclusively used by the relatively wealthy and usually sold for over
UKP 100 a gramme -- probably around €500 taking inflation into consideration.

Since the late Eighties, professional criminals have taken over the
trade and with their entry into the market, any notions of quality
control or health considerations have gone out the window.

The typical cocaine trafficker in Europe is a working class career
criminal. Their entry into the market has seen prices have plummeted
and what passes for cocaine can be had for €40 a gramme or even less.
What they have brought to Ireland is, as the families of the
critically ill young men in Waterford can testify, a pestilence.