The Covid-19 outbreak will cut demand for cocaine and other drugs if it leads to hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, gardaí believe. “The recreational drug-user – the guy who takes cocaine at weekends – may not be spending their money on cocaine, as we saw with the fall-off in usage during the economic crash in 2008,” said a Garda source. There might be a bit of an increase at house parties but it won’t have any great impact,” said another Garda drugs expert. But not a huge number of people go into clubs to source cocaine the way they used to years ago to get their ecstasy,” said one source. Ireland’s cocaine supplies no longer come across the Atlantic in yachts such as The Lucky Day and Dances with Waves, when hundreds of kilos of drugs were seized off the coast of Ireland.

Source: The Irish Times March 23, 2020 20:20 UTC