Casual drug users are the 'driving force' of gangs and gun attacks
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People having a spliff or a line of cocaine at the weekend cannot wring their hands at the Christmas Eve gun attack on a restaurant in Blanchardstown and think it has nothing to do with them.
Such is the view of a Philip Jennings, a long-time community activist in the west Dublin suburb.
The coordinator of Safer Blanchardstown, the name of the local policing forum, sees a logical and clear connection between all parts of the drugs issue.
“When I refer to the ‘drugs issue’, I am referring to all of it – whether it’s addiction, intimidation, recreational drug use, importation, gun crime, all the criminality that goes with drugs,” Philip said. “It’s all part and parcel of the package.”
Philip said that he does not know the exact reason for the shooting, which saw the gunman, Tristan Sherry, die during the attack, after being overpowered and fatally injured by customers, and, 11 days later, his victim, Jason Hennessy, died from his injuries.
Mr Hennessy, a 48-year-old father, had become involved in recent years with a notorious drug gang based in Blanchardstown, led by two people widely seen as volatile and violent.
“We have to be sensitive to the fact that two people lost their lives,” Philip said. “We don’t know the exact reason for the shooting, but these shootings all stem from drugs and drug gangs.
“It all comes back to down to money. And what money are they fighting for? It’s the recreational drug market. That’s my opinion.”
That’s why, many years ago, Philip set up the 'Think Before You Buy' campaign in Blanchardstown — to inform people, both users and potential users, about purchasing drugs.
“The aim behind the campaign is to try and convince people about the harms of what they might perceive to be a passive behaviour or harmless behaviour — the attitude ‘if I’m doing a line of cocaine or smoking a bag of weed, I’m affecting nobody but myself’.”
But, he said, it’s all connected: “We can’t vilify the farmer that’s producing [the drugs], the person that is processing and packaging, the person who is smuggling it the country, the person distributing it and the person who sells it, but the end user is completely, what would you say, innocent?
“The whole production line all comes back to the fella who is buying it, the purchaser. And why should he get a free ride?”
He said society has to be “100% sympathetic and support people” who have a drug dependence.
In talks he does in secondary schools, he gets pupils to help out with the maths in calculating how much gangs earn when individual drug purchases are all added up.
“Their jaws always drop when they work it out for themselves, because they never make the connection,” he said.
Philip's group are conducting research on their campaign as part of a relaunch, come March or April. Part of that is estimating the number of recreational users and how much they might spend.
He cites previously published research which estimated there were roughly 20,000 problem drug users in the country, with about half of them in treatment.
The Health Research Board National Drug and Alcohol Survey 2019-2020 said that 7% of people aged 15-64 were recent users of illegal drugs (use in the last year), equating to 289,000 people.
Some 4% were classified as current users (use in the last month), equating to 161,000 people.
“The amount of money the gangs get from these recreational users is phenomenal,” Philip said.
In his talks, he said he might also mention the innocent young people murdered in gangland shootings.
The names include Anthony Campbell, a 20-year-old plumber who happened to be working in the home of a gang boss, Marlo Hyland, in Finglas in 2006, when a gunman decided to kill him along with Hyland so as not to leave a witness.
Another is Melanie McCarthy, a 16-year-old girl who was sitting in a car with two others in Brookfield, Tallaght, in 2012 when gunman Daniel McDonnell, aged just 17, opened fire, fatally injuring her.
“Now, you could say about what happened in the restaurant in Blanchardstown,” Philip added. “And that could have been a hell of a lot worse. I was in the Army myself and I know a little bit about guns. I do know that this machine gun, machine pistol, this guy was supposed to have, they have a kick. How many people could have died?”
He said people who use drugs recreationally can’t just blame drug gangs for the violence: “You can’t say ‘it’s nothing to do with me. You can’t complain about the gun violence if you’re using for recreational purposes - because you’re the powerhouse, the driving force.
“And it’s not just people in Blanchardstown, it’s people down in Cork, everywhere. Who knows where the trail starts or ends. All communities are vulnerable to this kind of thing.”
The Think Before You Buy campaign has previously gained the interest of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and, during a meeting before covid, Philip met with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
“To be fair, he [Harris] saw the benefits of it, because the discourse has not been had.”
When launching Operation Tara, a national operation targeting drug trafficking at all levels, in July 2021, Commissioner Harris said: “Every person who continues to buy and consume illegal drugs inflicts untold damage to individuals under coercive control from organised drug gangs in Ireland, is putting money directly in the pockets of drug cartels, and is responsible for the damage done to communities here and abroad from drugs.”
Philip said some youths see the local dealers in their expensive clothes and runners and 'Turkey teeth' — the bright white teeth implants purchased in Turkey — and want to have that.
“They all want to be the big gangster,” Philip said, “but what is the point of all that money? Why be a Daniel Kinahan, who can flaunt his money in Dubai, but can’t go anywhere else.
“Look at the homes these boys have, the bulletproof windows. They can’t go anywhere, they can’t do anything.”
Philip has recently been appointed the local coordinator for the national Drive Project, a multi-agency initiative, led by the Department of Health, to try and respond to drug debt intimidation.
“Drug debts is an area where people who don’t use drugs becomes victims, because it’s generally the parents or their siblings or their grandparents who find themselves confronted with the debt [of the user],” Philip said.
“The first thing they do is panic. They don’t know what to do, where to go and they try and keep it quiet because there’s stigma around your children and drugs. So they might want to pay it off and, in a lot of cases, they do.”
He said the Drive Project will try and document the services in an area and coordinate them so that parents have “one person” to go to, who in turn can direct them.
He said another key aim of the project is to try and estimate the scale of the problem, which, remains, to, a large extent, unreported.
“People are absolutely terrified,” Philip said.
A major issue for Philip is what he describes as the “snake oil salesman” narrative in relation to cannabis and the perception among young people that it is a natural and safe drug.
“The only conversation you hear now, or the predominant narrative, is that it is a natural product, everyone is doing it, its non-addictive and hurting no one,” he said.
He said there had been “a discussion of sorts” about cannabis at the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use, at which he spoke.
He said the cannabis being smoked now is in a different league to the cannabis many people know from the 1970s and 1980s.
“The THC [active chemical] content then was about 4% or 5%, now you can have up to 20%.”
He added: “Lets have a proper conversation about cannabis before we go for legalisation or decriminalisation, because what’s going to happen is that it becomes normalised and trivialised and the medical costs will be thrown back on the State.”
Philip has many hats in the local area: his sits on the board of a secondary school, the Corduff task group and the Blakestown/Mountview task group as well as a suicide awareness body and a domestic violence group.
He’ll also be involved with the new Community Safety Partnership, which are being set up nationwide and expanding the role and membership of the existing Joint Policing Committees.
“I think we need to go back to the very basics — supporting schools and families," he said, "and what is called the ‘hidden harm’ of addiction, whether alcohol or drugs or whatever, on children.
“Children in homes where there is addiction or domestic violence are harmed. They’re vulnerable kids that might grow up and find some kind of solace in gang membership. And, if that’s not redirected, we are on a hiding to nothing.”