Garda Chief worried over rise in heroin use in Galway

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – Gardaí estimate that illegal drugs worth almost €5 million were consumed in Galway in 2019.

And it has been confirmed that the drugs scourge has become so acute in some city estates that local teenagers, and their families, are being threatened with violence by pushers collecting drug debts.

Drugs – including heroin – with a street value of over €500,000 were seized by Galway Gardaí last year but Gardaí believe this was only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of the quantities of narcotics in circulation.

Garda Chief Superintendent Tom Curley said the amount of drugs seized in Galway last year, worth €534,844, equated to roughly 10% of what was actually in circulation.

Chief Supt Curley, speaking at a Knocknacarra Community Centre on Tuesday night, during an annual public meeting of the Galway City Joint Policing Committee (JPC), said drugs was the biggest challenge facing Gardaí. He said the rise in use of heroin was ‘most worrying’.

(Photo: Used syringes found in the stairwell of a city centre carpark)
This is a preview only. To read the rest of this article, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week’s paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.