Drugs campaign answers questions on cocaine

A major drugs awareness campaign, warning of the dangers of cocaine and targeting the 15 to 34 age group, has begun.

Advertisements, which have already appeared on a number of popular websites, deal with the issue of cocaine use in a question and answer format.

One addresses the presumption that "taking a little cocaine at the start of a night out on the town is OK", saying that even taking a little cocaine with alcohol can create a toxic substance called cocaethylene which can cause respiratory disease, strokes and heart failure.

Other questions address the issue of the criminality of taking cocaine and the purity of the drug.

The campaign, which is being run by the Health Service Executive's Health Promotion Unit, has been started on a number of popular websites, including Facebook and the drugs awareness site drugs.ie, in advance of its formal launch later this month.

It will be expanded next month to include television, radio, billboards and public toilets.

The campaign aims to learn from the mistakes of the last drugs awareness campaign which ran between 2003 and 2005. That was slated by an independent review carried out by NUI Galway and commissioned by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs, which found the campaign was poorly funded, badly focused and lacked credibility because it did not include the effects of alcohol on drug taking.

The minister with responsibility for drugs policy, Pat Carey, said the campaign was not in response to the death of model Katy French or any of the other high-profile deaths from cocaine use recently, but was timely given the circumstances. He said the decision to start the campaign on well-known websites was taken after input from younger people most exposed to drugs.

"There was a proposal shortly after I came into office to create a higher level of awareness to educate about what drugs are about and the dangers of drugs and focusing this time on cocaine," Mr Carey said. "I think a lot of people did get a wake-up call after those deaths, but I'm hoping not just the fatalities that you read about, but the better quality information that is being put out will make a difference."