The War On Drugs Arrives In Carlow and Kilkenny

Somebody in Garda HQ is obviously a fan of Norse mythology. Why else would they have named an operation after Thor, the formidable hammer-wielding god most frequently associated with thunder, lightning, storms, strength and the protection of humankind.

The heavy hand behind Operation Thor’s hammer crashed down in Carlow and Kilkenny last week, when no less than 210 police officers – comprising 130 gardaí, 50 students from the Garda college and a visiting group of 30 European cops – raided 29 houses and business premises, and arrested more than 60 people, seizing €34,000 worth of drugs, including heroin, ecstasy, cannabis, cocaine and amphetamines in the raids.
On the surface, it seemed an impressive show of force. Sixty checkpoints were established across the Kilkenny-Carlow Division during Thursday. Between the checkpoints and the raids, 22 people were detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, for a range of suspected offences including theft, assault, fraud, misuse of drugs and burglary. A further 33 were arrested on foot of committal and penal warrants.
A single handgun was found during a search of a house in Kilkenny city. A cannabis growhouse was also apparently discovered in Castlecomer, where plants with an estimated value of €4,000 were seized.
A cynic might suggest that the real purpose of these raids was to divert attention from all of the negative press our beleaguered police force have been receiving recently over the whistle-blowing controversies. But no matter...
According to a statement released by Chief Supt Dominic Hayes, the objective of the operation was “to disrupt criminals living in and travelling through the Kilkenny-Carlow division. Criminals will be deterred from committing crime in an area perceived as being heavily policed. This operation will also assist in the detection of criminal offences through proactive policing activities.”
Of course, you can’t fault the Gardai for doing their job, but the question really has to be asked: was this an effective use of their time and resources?
Let’s break it down a bit. There were 210 officers involved in these raids, which resulted in 64 arrests; and €34,000 worth of drugs and a single handgun were seized. That’s just €161.90’s worth of dope per cop. Which, to put it mildly, is not exactly a great return on investment. And as for the handgun – well, that’s not much bang for our buck.

GROWHOUSE, WHAT GROWHOUSE?
Much like every other town and city in this Republic, Kilkenny has a significant problem relating to drug use. As it happens, the biggest problem is with the often badly adulterated nature of the heroin and cocaine that are sold. But there is a lot of it out there. In that context, €34,000’s worth of illegal substances is, at most, a drop in the ocean.
Arrest one semi-serious dealer and all the rest of them cheer. More business for them! So there’s plenty more where that came from. Sadly, there’s probably plenty more handguns, too…
Most drug dealers fear their rivals a whole lot more than they fear the law. So the notion that creating the impression that these areas are “heavily policed” might scare anyone out of business rings rather hollow. The fact is that, if you’re willing to risk taking a bullet from someone you owe money to, or from a rival gang, you’ll also risk a prison sentence. Besides, most serious criminals know that, resources being so scarce, the likelihood of Thor II happening any time soon is remote. Which is not to say that it couldn’t happen. The Gardaí badly need some positive PR. But any suggestion that this was a successful operation has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Was the real objective here to scare a few student dealers in the hope that it might just get them to forswear on the (currently) illegal drugs in the future? Maybe. Some reports did specifically refer to the fact that there were students among those arrested.
But that begs another question. It is well known that many leading figures in Irish society consumed illegal drugs in their student days. So who really thinks that it is a good idea to create a situation where a bus-load of students might be hauled before the courts and potentially handed down a conviction that would mean they will never be able to travel to the United States? Who really thinks it might be a good idea to blight people’s lives over what are weary small amounts of dope of one kind or another?
As for the supposed Castlecomer ‘growhouse’, seriously, what’s €4,000 worth of plants? The current market price for grass is somewhere around €300 per ounce. So was it actually a grow house, or did they simply bust some unfortunate stoner horticulturist with a couple of marijuana plants growing in his or her wardrobe?

POLITICALLY MOTIVATED LIE
I’m sure that the criminal lawyers of Carlow and Kilkenny are creaming in their silks with the news of 64 arrests, but if even half of these are to be charged, that’s still a hell of a lot of court time – not to mention garda time, given that the arresting officers will have to testify at any resulting criminal trials. Irish taxpayers will be footing the cost of all of that legal palaver. And to what good purpose? To send a bunch of low level operators or casual drug users to jail – where they can turn into hardened criminals if they mix with the habitual inhabitants of our prisons...
There may well be some genuinely dodgy characters amongst those arrested. But are they really all criminals? How many of those busted are simply otherwise law-abiding Irish citizens who prefer to use currently illicit substances to get their kicks rather than alcohol or prescription drugs?
Some of them, at least, will be ‘Thor losers’, further casualties of the long-lost-but-still-ongoing ‘War on Drugs’ declared by the odious President Richard Nixon in 1971. Not criminals, but people who have been wrongly criminalised. Worldwide, there are already hundreds of millions of casualties, both dead and alive, of this disastrous insult to humanity.
Indeed, it is not just an insult, but a dangerous one that was founded on blatant lies. Earlier this year, an old interview from 1994 with Nixon’s former domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman was published in Harper’s magazine for the very first time.
In an astonishing exchange, Ehrlichman brazenly admitted that the whole thing was simply a ruse to screw over the hippies and blacks.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people,” Ehrlichman told interviewer Dan Baum. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Ehrlichman’s testimony could not be clearer: the War on Drugs was founded on a deliberate, and politically-motivated lie. And, in truth, it has floundered.
Even the most sober and conservative commentators acknowledge that it has been long lost in America, where use of heroin, cocaine, cannabis and a range of other substances is currently at an all-time high. It’s long been lost worldwide, too.
Those behind Operation Thor’s most recent hammer-blow might be claiming a great success. But what’s the odds that there’s still plenty of smack, coke and spliff available in Carlow and Kilkenny today?
Let’s just say that, according to our sources, the odds are extremely high.