Drug info - Sick reality of what has happened that cocaine on your dinner table

[Lunar Loops]

This piece is from The Irish Independent (category of health was selected, although would have probably chosen propoganda as a heading if it were available....having said that, some of what is said is undoubtedly true; make your own minds up). The death in Waterford mentioned in the article can be read about in this thread:

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42835

Anyway, here is the article:

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 £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.

[powerrobbie]

This mostly describes the herion trade bud, you dont see addicts walking around with bags of blow in there mouth, thats H, blow is to expensive for homeless people to deal with
Crack is more there style

[JaWill88]

to swim none of what is mentioned in this article seems suprising.

[Homegrow3r]

Originally Posted by Irish Indo

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.

Eh what passes for cocaine they say, do they think it wasn't coca that killed the lads at the party? It was good coca that's why they died, stupid article, inconsistent.