A crack-down on recreational drug users could help take the money and guns out of the hands of Irish gangs, according to commentator John McGuirk.

He was speaking after the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel urged senior police to “name and shame” middle-class drug users as part of a crack-down on recreational drug use.

She asked police to target cocaine use at universities and “make an example” out of recreational users to drive home the message that there are consequences for taking drugs.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Gript Editor John McGuirk said he was in favour of taking things “a little bit further.”

   

“I think if you look at so-called middle-class drug use which is really just commercial drug use – the end-user of drugs, whether they be middle class, upper class or lower class – that person is essentially paying and providing the funding that places the weapons into the hands of people who shoot and kill in gangland and other murders that cause mayhem in parts of Ireland and parts of society that these users never reach,” he said.

“If you look at, say the gangland killings we have had in Ireland over the last five to ten years and you want to find out who is responsible, well, the first people who are responsible are obviously the people who pull the trigger – but the second tier of responsibility for that goes to the people who are funding it.

“The people who are funding it are the sons and daughters often of very wealthy middle-class bankers and judges and lawyers and politicians and there has to be some responsibility for that.”

He said there is an argument for legalising drugs rather than fighting a war on them; however, he insisted that, as long as we are fighting the war, “we need to fight it across the board.

He suggested drug users should be targeted in the same manner as drug smugglers.

“Ultimately the problem here is that we have one standard for the people supplying the drugs and an entirely different standard for the people using them,” he said.

“Most of what we are talking about here, let’s be honest, is cocaine. That is the middle-class drug. That is also the most lucrative drug.

“If you start going after middle-class cocaine and you start going after people in high-profile respectable professions - lawyers, accountants, people in the media and politicians - and you start exposing their use and you create a real disincentive to use this stuff, I think you might see a reduction in demand.”

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