IT IS late on a wet weekend night in Dublin s city centre. Myself and fellow Hot Press reporter Craig Fitzsimons are out walking the shining streets of Temple Bar in search of dodgy drugs. Of course, all drugs bought off the street are dodgy by their very nature, but the kind we re looking for tonight are dodgy in a different way, at least if all the reports we ve heard are true. The kind we re looking for tonight are so dodgy they don t even work!
It takes us about ten minutes of wandering around in the rain before we find them. Or rather, they find us . . .
A young guy around 17 approaches us near the Central Bank, his track suit completely soaked through with rain and making a sloshing noise as he walks. Hasherease? he hisses out of the corner of his mouth as he passes, barely making eye contact. I stop, realising that I m a potential customer.
He slows down and repeats his little mantra again: Hasherease? I nod this time and, having quickly scanned the street for cops, he slyly nudges his head towards a nearby alley. The deal is on. We follow him there. Craig keeps an eye out for trouble as I negotiate with him.
What re ye looking for? he asks.
Just a ten spot of hash, I answer, waving a note at him.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of what looks like half a dozen small blocks of hash, holding them out for me to choose. They all look to be the same size. As I pick one off his palm, I suddenly pull my tenner back from his eager finger.
What re ye doing? he demands angrily. Give us me money!
Just wait.
The clingfilm has been wrapped so tightly that it takes ages to remove. I ve got to keep tearing it off in bits. It s a rather slow process and our dealer is getting more and more upset as he watches. Just give us the money, he pleads.
Relax, I say, you ll get the money if this is what you say it is.
It s fucking hash! Give me the tenner, he shouts anxiously. But there are two of us and there isn t a whole lot he can do but watch me examine his merchandise in my own time.
Eventually, I manage to get half the clingfilm off. I hold up my lighter to burn a corner and then I put the dark coloured block to my nose. There s barely any smoke and absolutely no smell.
This is turf, I tell him, thrusting the evidence into his face.
It s not, he lies with all the considerable indignity he can muster.
Yes it is, I insist.
No, it isn t!
Our little street pantomime is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of his girlfriend. We hadn t seen her up to now, but presumably she d been watching from across the street. She s around the same age but twice as gutsy. Give him the fucking money! she shrieks at me.
But this is turf, I repeat, holding it up to her.
She pauses, suddenly realising the reason for the delay. They ve been rumbled. Drug logic takes over.
It doesn t matter, she says. You ve opened it anyway, so you ve got to pay for it.
Get lost, I say, flicking the offending piece of bog at her.
She wants to stay and argue but her boyfriend just wants to get the hell out of here, so he grabs her arm and pulls her towards the street. They both walk swiftly away, hurling abuse as they go.
Before they turn the corner I hear her say to him, I can t believe you let him away with that. Oh, the indignity of it all! Craig and I crack up laughing. Seems like the rumours were true.
A little later on, we repeat the same scenario with a different dealer. Of course, his hash turns out to be turf as well. As he runs away, Craig remembers where he d seen him before.
He was in the Spar when I was getting cigarettes earlier, he tells me. He bought about three packets of Anadin.
Obviously his E was as dodgy as the rest of his wares.
It was inevitable that something like this would happen sooner or later. The combination of vigilantism in the inner city and increased police pressure on major importers has completely changed the face of the Irish drugs scene over the past year. There s more dealing happening on the streets than before. And while there s any amount of heroin available out there, softer drugs like cannabis and ecstasy are in much shorter supply. Rip-offs are now far more commonplace than before. This represents a worrying development for any casual user.
Unfortunately, the chap at the Garda Press Office didn t share my concern when I rang the next day to explain what was going on. Turf and Anadin? he laughed. Brilliant!
But what s the legal situation if they re caught selling it?
Well, they re not proscribed drugs, he explained. If we stop one of them on the street and they had a bag of what looked like hash or Ecstasy then we d send it up to the lab. The only thing you might get him under would be casual trading, but I don t know if we d bother.
Is it not fraud, though?
Well, the only way you can do him for fraud would be if you had a complaint, he explained. And I can t see anybody walking into Pearse Street Garda Station going excuse me, this bastard is after selling me turf and I was after hash . That s not gonna happen. There s not a thing we can do about these guys. Except maybe congratulate them on their ingenuity.
I must say, I was rather perturbed by his flippancy. Don t the Guards see the terrible potential of this situation? If these kind of rip-offs continue the inevitable consequences will be horrific I can see it all now, a conflict to make what s gone before look like a Smartie Party. Visualise the Evening Herald headlines for yourself: TURF WAR IN TEMPLE BAR! . n