- Music
- 30 Jun 10
In a wide-ranging interview with Hot Press, businessman Ben Dunne also talks frankly about his notorious cocaine bust in Florida, delivers his verdict on legal highs, and offers his thoughts on Charlie Haughey’s greed...
Interviewed in the new issue of Hot Press (out tomorrow, Thursday July 1), Dunne (pictured by Mark Nixon) talks frankly about his cocaine use, and how conflict within his famous family contributed to it: "No doubt about it. There was the internal politics in the family. We all had to pretend to be a big, happy, united family. … if I had stayed there I wouldn’t have survived it."
Regarding the headshop/legal highs debate he says, "… the people who are advising on drugs don't realise the facts. The amount of people who use drugs is far bigger than people think."
He also points out that 80% - 85% of people who use drugs don’t become dependent. "I think a young person would be saying, "Yeah, two people die using that blooming stuff, but there's thousands die using drink."
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And on entrepreneur Bill Cullen's advise to the unemployed to get up at six in the morning and work for nothing, Dunne retorts, "Bull! Absolute bull!… It’s an insult to ask somebody to work for nothing. And I'd be ashamed to say it, and I'm glad I'm getting an opportunity to criticise him for it... he is wrong there."
Read this fascinating interview in its entirety in the new issue of Hot Press (Oxegen special), out tomorrow, Thursday.