Hi folks:
As to my knowlege about the drug problems in Ireland, I can only add some anadotal evidence, which may or may not shed light. In the sevnties when I was in Belfast, there was vertualy no drug deeling to my knowlege. In fact, in 1977, there was some violent house cleaning in the IRA to remove rising gansterism which happens in any war, but is seldom dealt with because the gangsters are on OUR SIDE, as both sides see their gansters. The gangsterism had to do with housing alocation and such, and to my observation ended when the IRA cleaned house - to use a uphamisem for a number of often violent solutions. War unfortunatley brings out the worst in everyone. By the eighties England was making alogations of drug deeling by the IRA. The IRA responded by pointing out that the drugs came into the country with the common market, and that it was international buisness men that brought the drugs, and to prove their non-involvement passed a sentence of death on anyone selling herion (the big dangerous drug of the early eighties).
Now the drug ecconomy and drug culture are like a bath tub tap being turned on and the taps unscrewed. It is very hard to turn off the tap once opened. I remember the first time I saw anything to do with drugs in Kerry, about 1976, a fellow, maybe an american, I don't recall, asked my friend Fergus where he could get pot. Fergus put down his instrument, hauled him out of the pub by the scruff of the neck and pointed him up the road (east) and told him not to come back to town. Those days are LONG gone in Ireland. As drugs have come to Ireland, and I think the Republicans were right, with the common market, it insinuates itself into the general ecconomy. I don't have any evidence of Repulicans deeling drugs, as it never came up in any of the trials I was involved in. However, if the IRA was seling drugs, you can bet, in the US where drug convictions are on the same par as murder, in fact often treated more serriously than murder, when trying to make their case that the IRA was a terrorist organisation (which the state department and England failed to do in every extradition case they attempted) they NEVER gave evidence of IRA drug dealing. I may be wrong, it is hard to prove something by a negitive, but that leads me to assume the IRA and INLA were not involved in selling drugs. If anyone has more concrete info that they were, I would be interested in hearing about it, but please, give some sort of sourse so we can wiegh its validity, like a court case, so we don't deal with rummors here.
All the best,
Larry