Cocaine use among young people has reached far greater levels than heroin use ever has, a leading figure on drug abuse claimed yesterday.
The chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Drugs, Dr Des Corrigan of the School of Pharmacy at TCD, told a seminar in Cork that some 5 per cent of people aged between 15 and 34 had used cocaine.
"Nationally about 5 per cent of young people say that they've used cocaine compared to an equivalent figure for heroin of about 1 per cent - the point being that cocaine is available in all areas," said Dr Corrigan.
He said people who took cocaine and alcohol and people who took cocaine and heroin were increasing the risk of death by heart attack or stroke significantly, as both combinations could prove fatal.
"Injecting a speedball, a combination of cocaine and heroin, greatly increases the risk of overdoses."
He also warned that injecting or smoking cocaine as crack cocaine (when mixed with bread soda) or as freebase (when mixed with ammonia) increased the risk of death or disease as the cocaine reached the brain much faster than when snorted or inhaled.
"People get trapped into an addictive pattern of use more quickly when they smoke or inject," Dr Corrigan said. "The injection doesn't last as long, people start injecting more and they're sharing needles more often, which is increasing the risk of being exposed to HIV or hepatitis C."
Unlike heroin addicts who can be prescribed methadone to help wean them off their addiction, cocaine addicts have no such drug available to them, which makes it more difficult to get them into drug rehabilitation programmes, said Dr Corrigan.
He was speaking at a seminar entitled "The Truth About Cocaine", which was organised by Cork Local Drugs Task Force and Cork City Partnership Community Outreach Drug Awareness Project, as well a number of community drug initiative groups.
The seminar was attended by about 170 people including community and voluntary groups, parents, gardaí, probation and welfare staff and representatives from various clubs and pubs around Cork city.
The spread of cocaine was also noted by Sister Margaret Kiely who has been involved in addiction services in Cork for the past 17 years and who founded the Tabor Lodge Treatment Centre in 1989. She has since co-founded two halfway houses, Renewal and Fellowship House.
According to figures from Tabor Lodge, the centre treated some 43 people for cocaine addiction last year in contrast to just 10 people in 2002 while the Garda says that the number of cocaine seizures in Cork has also risen over the same period.