Crack cocaine in the Dublin region - Health Research Board

With regard to crack use and acquisitive crime, it was found in the UK that crack usersreported the highest levels of drug expenditure and the most crime (Best et al. 2001).Prostitution is another source of income availed of by drug users, particularly females,to sustain their drug habit. Studies of English cities and towns have indicated theprevalence of crack use among female sex workers, particularly street-based workers,who in many cases spend the majority of their earnings on crack (Jeal and Salsbury2007; Terence Higgins Trust 2006; Ward et al. 2000). While there has been no researchrelated specifically to crack cocaine in Ireland, O’Neill and O’Connor (1999) found thatfemale prostitutes who were drug users engaged in sex work purely to sustain theirdrug habit. Dillon (2001: 41) found that female inmates in an Irish prison who had beeninvolved in sex work were ‘reluctant criminals’ and they pursued sex work because itwas deemed low risk when compared with larceny or burglary.With regard to systemic-type crimes, studies based in New York and London havedocumented the manner in which young people in deprived communities becomeinvolved in dealing crack (Bourgois 2003a; Lupton et al. 2002). No research studieshave been conducted in Ireland on this subject. Available evidence, which includesnewspaper and court reports, does suggest that there is a significant and increasingamount of violence associated with the illegal trade in drugs. In a number of recentlyreported seizures in Ireland, guns were discovered along with the drugs (Connolly2006a).6.2 Psycho-pharmacological crime: crack and violenceThe majority of drug-treatment services reported that crack-using clients exhibiteda higher degree of aggressiveness when they presented for treatment. However, nodrug-treatment personnel reported any level of violent encounter with users, and alarge majority of those interviewed stated that they had no fears or reservations abouttreating crack users, despite the higher levels of aggression or tension:And I was in another family setting the other day and [she] is causing chaos and they saidthat it’s the aggression, the attacking, they don’t give a fuck like, that’s what the daughtersaid to the ma that [she doesn’t] give a fuck like. And the ma said ‘but we’ve came so far,you’ve got so far, you got stabilisation back, you got working relations with your familywith your own kids and now all of a sudden it’s all about to go out the window’. And she’sprepared to throw it out, and if she throws it out well that’s the way it’s going to go, friendswill take them in for a while but they won’t take them in for long.north-east Dublin outreach worker (October 2007)70 Crack cocaine in the Dublin region: an evidence base for a crack cocaine strategy