Among those who have died from drugs in recent times in Ireland are Francis Rice, Samuel Ward, Mickey Rooney, Anthony Kane, Paul Devine, Francis Collins, Christopher Johnston, Martin McCrory, Ian Lyons and Sean Devlin.

They were all accused of being pushers and gunned down by the IRA.
Francis Rice, 23, was shot five times in the head and dumped in a ditch at Lenadoon in west Belfast on April 25, 1994, four months before the IRA ceasefire. He’d been selling cannabis. Eight others were struck down before Sean Devlin, 31, father of two, was killed by four bullets in the brain on September 16, 1996. He had been due in court next morning charged with possession of cannabis.
The 10 deaths, inflicted under the cover-name Direct Action Against Drugs, were authorised by middle-range Provo leaders in Belfast who either disapproved of moves towards ceasefire and disarmament, or were alarmed at the extent of disapproval in the ranks. An outlet for discontent other than targeting State forces was needed. Blowing the heads off individuals who could be projected into the public mind as purveyors of evil and a threat to the young was as safe a way as any of providing release.
Fear and panic over drugs can be a godsend to godfathers – State as well as paramilitary.
You want people to tolerate tough measures that trash due process, convince them it’s the only way to extirpate a deadly threat to their children.
The ceasefire broke down in February 1996 and was reinstated in July 1997, paving the way for the talks which led to the April 1998 Agreement. Some believe the process couldn’t have been kept on track through this rough period without the safety valve of the drugs killings.
Nobody in authority was minded to risk the negotiations for the sake of dead pushers. Nobody has ever been charged. I cannot recall an arrest for questioning. In any ordering of the dead of the 30-year conflict, the victims of the IRA/DAAD rest at the bottom of the pile.
If the IRA had specific reason for giving its gunmen the go-ahead to stalk and stiff alleged drugs dealers, the killing spree enjoyed general support, or at least wasn’t opposed, far beyond its own ranks. It provided a perfect paradigm for a paramilitary group out to keep control of its own turf even as its political raison d’etre faded away. Or, as with Loyalist groups, when they’d never had much of a political mission anyway.
The UDA leadership put Johnny Adair and his C Company out of the Lower Shankill because, they said, he was a drugs dealer. The steroid-muncher retorted that this proved the organisation had been taken over by drugs dealers. He was right. But so were they.
What Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries have in common in this context is an understanding that many who shrink from violence in almost all other circumstances will make an exception for violence ostensibly aimed against drugs. So they all have an interest in hyping the drugs danger. Same as mainstream advocates of law’n’order and of keeping control of the unruly.
We don’t get many chances to praise policemen. So give it up for Richard Brunstrom, chief constable of North Wales, who last month observed that Ecstasy isn’t especially dangerous.
“If you look at the Government’s own research, you will find that Ecstasy by comparison to many other substances, legal and illegal, is a comparatively safe substance. There is a lot of scare-mongering, rumour-mongering... It isn’t borne out by the evidence. Ecstasy is not a safe substance and I’m not suggesting that it is. But it’s much less dangerous than, for instance, tobacco and alcohol, both of which are freely available.”
None of the know-nothing commentators who went instantly ballistic (“This man is a danger to our children – SACK HIM NOW!”) has challenged the scientific basis of what Brunstrom said. They cannot. But they can continue to ransack the grief of bereaved families if even the most tenuous link can be suggested between the death of a young person and the use of E.
If a tenth of the publicity given to every Ecstasy-related death was routinely accorded alcohol-related deaths, there’d be no space for other material in the newspapers.
A number of senior police and retired officers in the US now echo Brunstrom in recognising the futility of the “war on drugs.” Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is “an international non-profit educational organisation created to give voice to all the current and former members of law enforcement agencies who believe that the US war on drugs has failed and who wish to support alternative policies that will lower the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction by ultimately ending prohibition.”
Recent Irish converts to the cause of decriminalising drugs include Vincent Browne, Eoghan Harris and Gay Byrne.
Even so, the case for decriminalisation is still consigned to the margins. The members of Leap may have acquired some cop-on, but most cops still see themselves and are seen by the establishment they serve as last-ditch defenders of the existing order.
The boss class needs the people at the bottom to associate their own interests with the existing order. Mobilising the masses in support of a “war on drugs” fits the bill beautifully.
This is the main reason for their resistance to the idea of discussing drugs in the context of health and education rather than in policing and prohibition.

The war on drugs has been waged most fiercely in the United States.
In 2006, 739,000 American citizens were arrested for possessing small amounts of pot. (An additional 91,000 were charged with marijuana-related offences.) This is the highest annual total ever – double the number for 1990.
The consequences of arrest vary widely. Californians are liable for a small fine. But a single joint could cost you your driver’s licence in Ohio. In Texas, you risk six months in a cell. In Oklahoma, a first offence of possession can get you a year.
In the US at the moment, there are 45,000 people behind bars for possessing marijuana.
President Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommended decriminalisation in 1972. This was rejected in favour of “war”.
In the last 20 years, more than 10 million Americans have been arrested on pot charges. But federal government figures show that marijuana production and use has continued steadily to rise.
That the war on drugs has failed is a fact. And decriminalisation isn’t a slogan.

And finally, as Sir Trevor says on the News at 10: (a), on marijuana, Paul McCartney wrote ‘A Day in the Life.’ Clean, he wrote ‘Mull of Kintyre.’
And (b), some people reading his Irish Times column say that John Waters must be on dope. But he’s not. He’s on pope. Which is far more dangerous, and should certainly be kept out of reach of the children.
And (c), Karma 45’s single ‘Ecstasy’ is set for release later this month. Let it into your head and you won’t need drugs for a week.
And (d), What’s the etiquette for refusing a line of coke at a party in an RTÉ’s presenter’s house? Nobody knows, since this has never happened.