The poor “victims” of illicit drugs
By Dr. Terry Maguire, a Northern Irish Community Pharmacist, senior lecturer at School of Pharmacy (Queens University Belfast) and Belfast LCG member.
“Death to Drug Deelers[sic]” was writ large on the gable wall just off Belfast’s Shankill Road and below it, with no irony intended “PSNI touts out”. For those unfamiliar with gable walls just of Belfast’s Shankill Road there is something remarkable about this piece of graffitti, remarkable that is because here is the erstwhile abode of Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair a UDA commander and rampant drug-dealer when he was the local “UDA commander”. Long since expelled to Scotland where he has set up a new operation there’s good evidence that his foot soldiers have maintained business as usual.
Johnny Adair was an odious, yet to some an iconic, character when he lived among the good people of the lower Shankill; a small man with an outsized ego. He was, as they say locally, “scum” and it is this view of “Mad Dog”; that of an evil manipulating fiend, that we all have of a drug dealer (deeler even). He spreads the poison and everyone else is merely his victim captured in his heinous web.
I had almost forgotten about Drug Dealer Adair but the summer of 2013 brought him back into focus as Belfast experienced an upturn in the illicit drug market and an increase in “victims”; people merely minding their own business when the venom of drug dealing struck them and changed, if not extinguished, their lives forever.
In the early summer I appeared on local TV to comment on the suspicious sudden deaths of 10 young and otherwise healthy people. The police was puzzelled so was Department of Health. The message went out that there might be a batch of dangerous amphetamine-like substances on the market; my job was to list the side-effects and encourage potential “victims” not to take anything.
“Don’t you recognise me?” said the tall young man standing in the pharmacy accompanied by a friend. Andrew was a child of 7 when I last saw him, a PKU baby and so our pharmacy where his mum picked up his special foods, was for the first part of his life his second home. He went to University in England and was now managing a chain of pub restaurants. He had come home for a friend’s wedding due today but on Saturday morning, the day of stag he was found dead in bed with a suspected overdose from “Rolex” the current street-amphetamine derivative. The friends were stunned and “needed to do something”. They had a small fund and wanted me to identity a “drug testing kit” that they could hand out in Belfast night-clubs so that people would “know what they are taking”.
I polity and sympathetically convinced him of the nonsense of the suggestion. Best you tell your friend not to take anything. It seemed unhelpful.
Four weeks later Sean a local 17 year old was hospitalised with a suspected drug overdose and was near death for two days. When he came to the Irish News had him on the front page, a victim to drug crime. His father commented that three men, “scum” had approached him as he was “standing at his own front door”, give him four tablets and told him to take them. The latest victim of the deadly drug dealers.
The next weekend in Donegal a good friend was making his way from his bar stool through the crowd to the toilet when he was engaged by someone we both know, not very well, so my friend was surprised by his conviviality. Seems he was in a spot of bother and needed to inform my friend. He runs a struggling haulage firm and one of his drivers on returning from Europe was stopped at Rosslare and a stash of cocaine discovered in the lorry cab. His driver was to blame but he was also liable to a severe fine as the haulier. This was unfair he was a victim.
On relying this story to me I inform my friend that this is the second time the haulier found himself in this position. Fifteen years ago he spent 9 months in Portloise goal for having a tin of cocaine stuffed into the glove compartment of his lorry. He had no idea how it got there and therefore this is the second time he has been a “victim”.
And then, as the relatively good summer travelled towards its end, there was the horror story of poor Michella McCollum Connelly and her Scottish friend.
This story attracted world-wide attention in what is, certainly if you are a parent, heart breaking. The poor local lass along with her Scottish friend – well I know they only met in Peru the day before the arrest – might be subject to the most vile prison sentence. There is strong local consensus that they are both victims; innocents abroad.
It seems the only way to address the problem of victims in the illicit drugs business is to make all drugs legal and then, as a decent caring society, we can collectively take on the responsibilities the victims seem incapable of accepting.
