Dublin has a crack cocaine crisis

How the capital became hooked

Witnesses state children as young as 12 are dealing crack, and young people are smoking crack cocaine with their parents.

Drug workers confirm queues are forming around housing estates to buy, and women are being coerced into sex work.

Ireland has the highest drug death per population in Europe; however, community addiction services say they are struggling for funding.

Ireland’s capital city is in the throes of a crack crisis. A global shortage of heroin as well as its low price point has seen crack replace heroin as the problem drug of choice for many of the most vulnerable communities.

Crack is sold in 20, 40 bags or in some cases, three for 50.

However, almost every county in Ireland has reported issues with crack, with Limerick, Meath and Kildare ranking behind Dublin.

In 2024, 1,329 cases were recorded with crack cocaine as the main problem, an increase of 668%.

Most street drugs are consumed by men in the majority; however, crack cocaine in Ireland is almost evenly taken by both.

More than 4-in-10 cases (45.6%) entering treatment for crack cocaine as the main problem were female, while 54.3% were male.

Amber is in her thirties. Unemployment while using crack is common; just 7.2% of users were in paid employment, while 82.0% were unemployed. Like Amber* 21.2% of users were homeless.

Amber does outreach work with a drug treatment programme while still being in active addiction herself. She does sex work in Dublin city to fund her needs.

She says Dublin has changed over the ten years she has been here. “It’s extremely easy to get crack in Dublin now,” she said.

“There’s more crime and violence on the streets.

“The age of like people dealing and doing runs and everything gets lower and lower. The other night, I trying to find someone to score off, and we end up walking right down the Quays.”

Teresa and her friend were confronted by two young dealers. Both younger than 15.

“I said; ‘Fuck that would break your heart. I was nearly in tears, because he was about 12, you know, he was a kid on a scooter, in a tracksuit and everything, with his mask over his eyes. But he was a baby.

“I'm in my 30s, and I was just like; ‘fucking hell’, and his brother or something, next to him, was bossing everyone at this queue of addicts.”

The older teenager was directing the group of people to back to the alley, to avoid Gardai or anyone noticing.

“You don't want crowds of addicts around you. It becomes obvious what's going on. He looked like 15 at the most. The two of them selling all by themselves. It's fucking awful, and they will be caught and jailed, and their lives will be over.”

This is true, there are dozens of drug cases before the local district courts in Limerick and Dublin each week. More serious cases of sale and supply appear before the circuit court.

Someone caught with the drugs in their possession who ends up in the Circuit Criminal Court could up to life in prison.

Young people are often coerced into working for drug gangs due to their ability to go unnoticed; many are known as “runners” who transport “wraps’” of drugs across city centres or estates on bikes or scooters.

Multiple reports have stated that young people see this as an easy way to make money in their communities.

In January this year, a schoolboy accused of supplying cocaine along the Royal Canal Greenway in Dublin has been barred from using bicycles, e-scooters or "anything on wheels", which "he uses when he is allegedly drug dealing". He was 16.

The availability of crack and its less debilitating high than heroin mean its use in women has grown.

Amber believes because it’s smoked rather than injected, women feel safer using it.

“Women don't want to be tagged as IV users. People don't want to queue up for the injection room and reveal that's what they're doing, because it's then a jump away from ‘you've got AIDS, you're filthy, etc’.

“So I think crack is mildly more socially acceptable. It's extremely easy to get. If you're in the know, you can get some for a tenner, and it wouldn't be great, but it would be something, and we see younger and younger kids being on it.

“It's swapped for pills and everything. I know so many teenagers, I have friends whose kids are smoking rock, including with their parents, which is fucking terrible, but it is what it is.”

The high itself, Amber says, forces women into sex work and other illegal activities to make money.

“Crack is really short lived, which is frustrating,” Amber says.

“The high will last is five to 15 minutes for crack, depending on how you cook it, it's fairly easy to make.

“It's way more addictive than coke, because of the quicker high. It's a very frustrating drug, though, because you spend a lot of time and go through agony trying to make money, then it doesn't really last.”

Amber first started using Class A drugs when she was just 14, while living in England, and as such she has built up a tolerance.

“I can smoke 20 (euro of crack) rock in a pipe like in one go,” she adds.
In one instance, her roommate in a hostel was beaten up because she was selling on drugs on somebody else's turf, and could hardly move in pain.

Amber would go out begging every day or doing sex work to try and get enough money for them both.

“I knew I'd barely get high, because you make 20 quid, a pipe each, and it can take you all day just to make that, then your straight back out begging again, it kind of takes over your life,” she said.

Amber says because unlike other cities, Dublin does not have a consumption room for those using crack, they’re pushed into more dangerous situations.

“We're usually using in crack houses, council flats or train station jacks,” she said.

“Anything you're desperately strung out on, you feel rubbish when you don't have it, but crack has more like psychological symptoms, the come down from crack is awful.
I mainly feel paranoid when I'm high. So, if I’m smoking crack at Heuston station, I'm too scared to leave.

“If I cross a road, (I think) every car is going to hit me. Everyone's walking too close to me. It's like everything overstimulation, and mainly coming down is like you have to ignore your brain because it's the worst feeling in the world. It's just despair.”

Amber has gone through periods of sobriety. Right now, she has a poly-drug problem, which means she uses multiple drugs, including crack and meth. Sex work and drug use was normalised for her from a young age. Amber does not believe she will live much longer.

“Stigma is a killer,” she says.

“Stigma, prejudice, unwillingness to invest in people, these are throwaway populations in estates that nobody cares about.

“We're like sewer rats, nobody wants to live like that. Nobody wants to die like that. Nobody deserves to.

“I think I'll either get clean soon or die soon. I’e had quite a few suicide attempts and a few near misses with pills.

“I just want to say, whoever's listening to this, if you ain't from this life, you don’t know the half of it. Walking past someone, all the people suddenly develop a stiff neck or very interested in their phone as I walk by.

“The money don't mean nothing to me compared to a smile.

“You wouldn’t believe the horrors we go through, and most of us don't live to tell the tale. Nobody asks us to.”

In 2024, 1,329 cases were recorded with crack cocaine as the main problem.

More than 4-in-10 cases (45.6%) entering treatment for crack cocaine as the main problem were female, while 54.3% were male

The average age of a crack cocaine user is 40

Crack cocaine cases resided in almost every county in Ireland.

The vast majority (79.6%) of all cases entering treatment for crack cocaine resided in Dublin, followed by Limerick (3.2%), Meath (2.4%) and Kildare (2.1%)

7.2% were in paid employment, while 82.0% were unemployed

21.2% were homeless

The latest data, from 2021, states cocaine was implicated in 3 in 10 (30.2%) poisoning deaths overall, the majority of which were among males (81.3%, 87).

The number of deaths with cocaine implicated more than trebled (311.5%) (from 26 in 2012 to 107 deaths in 2021).