Dolphins Barn And Drugs: The State Of Play Today?

national | history and heritage | feature Sunday December 04, 2005 01:04 by Barry

This story was first published by Barry as a comment on this article: "A review of "Pushers Out: The inside story of Dublin’s anti-drugs movement"

I was going out with a girl from near Dolphins barn when Josie Dwyer was killed. I used to pass him quite frequently. He was always on the grass outside the flats or hanging around the railings on the bridge. A pathetic sight - he couldn't have weighed more than 7 or 8 stone.

Before he was killed if you walked through Fatima chances are you'd be approached maybe a couple of times and asked if you were looking gear. And it only takes a minute to walk through it. One guy even employed the Moore street selling technique of yelling "come get yer luvverly gear" while riding round on a mountain bike. The drugs thing was just out of control. The bird I went with attended many anti-drug vigils and marches and even favoured shooting the bigger dealers dead. Last I heard of her years ago she was addicted to smoking the stuff herself - just gave up . Beautiful girl too, an awful waste.

Im not surprised to be honest Josie Dwyer got thumped even though it was wrong, especially given the company he was in. People were at the end of their tether with the rate of adddiction. What made that era particularly bad and dangerous for youngsters was the emerging rave scene which itself lead to an explosion in drug use and culture even in the middle class areas. The working class areas got hit even worse.

Youngsters would go to raves and get introduced to the Es which they were assured were safe and non addictive. Sure didnt trendy types like that bollocks Anthony Wilson and others go on TV talking about how great they were. Trendy comedians joked on TV about taking them. The youngsters would be worried about going home off their faces on Es because their parents would see they were hyper. Mnay of their parents were violently anti drugs. The E dealers had a great solution to this - smoke a bit of gear and it'll wind you down before you go home. Nobody'd know any different.

They assured the youngsters they couldn't get addicted through smoking the stuff, and the youngsters thought it was a world removed from the addicts with their needles who they actually looked down on. If they smoked it only once a week it took a wee while to actually get addicted so the dealers lies were actually believed by many. Those who did get addicted were thought just to have "got into the gear" of their own choice rather than have gotten addicted trying to come down off Es . What happened then was the children of people who were anti drugs became drug addicts through a popular youth culture being exploited by dealers as much as urban neglect . And because they were smoking rather than injecting it took the parents a lot longer to cop on .

Although Josie Dwyer was a victim , an addict and an AIDS sufferer he was at the end of the day one of those people who were selling this stuff to youngsters and assuring them they couldnt get addicted smoking it . He was only selling to feed his own addiction but the frustration that led to him being thumped was down to his openly selling gear at all hours of the day and night . He was nearly a land mark in Fatima as he was there all the time . 99% of the time his presence evoked pity but on that night it resulted in frustration and he was seen as just another vulture.

It was terrible he was killed but people need to understand the frustration and pain that the drugs caused in that community.

Anyway , its been a while since I was really talking to anybody in that area . Has the Heroin addiction rate remained constant since then or is it worse now ? Or has coke/crack moved in to replace it ? Whats the story with anti drug activism in the south inner city today ?

Sounds like a good book that , I'd be very interested in getting a copy.