The Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy called for greater community support in the fight against illegal drug use.
He urged people to name drugs suppliers in an effort to tackle the considerable challenge caused by the illicit drugs trade. Mr Murphy said that he did not accept that the drugs problem was out of control.
He said that gardaí would target whoever was involved and whoever was supplying illegal drugs such as cocaine regardless of what strata of society they came from.
Mr Murphy said that people who took illegal drugs were putting their lives on the line every day as they did not know what was contained in them.
The Garda Commissioner's comments came amid growing concern about cocaine use in Ireland which has been linked to a number of recent deaths.
Yesterday the Minister of State with responsibility for the national drugs strategy, Pat Carey, said gardaí would be targeting pubs and clubs where they believed cocaine was being consumed in the run-up to Christmas.
He also maintained that the strategy would be attempting to reach out and educate people about the danger of the drug and using popular websites such as Bebo and Facebook "to try and get the message through to people in the 18 to 35-year-old age group".
Meanwhile, senior Garda sources believe that it is highly unlikely that a single contaminated or extremely pure batch of cocaine is responsible for a number of deaths and serious illnesses over recent weeks.
Senior Garda sources told The Irish Times there were no known links between the incidents in which two Waterford men died, the death of model Katy French and the events at the weekend in Mullingar and Longford which left two men in hospital as a result of suspected cocaine overdoses.
A 17-year-old teenager from Mullingar and a 26-year-old man from Longford town were both in the intensive care unit at the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar last night.
Their condition had improved yesterday evening from "critical" to "stable".
The Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Micheál Martin, said last night that he thought that lessons would be learned from recent cocaine-related deaths. "I think we are at a tipping point," he said.
Speaking on RTÉ he said that there was an opportunity to drive home messages particularly to the cohort of people who were using cocaine and other drugs.