Vigilantism, or something even more sinister, returned to the streets of Dublin last week when two head shops were the victims of arson attacks.

The first to be targeted on February 12 was Nirvana in Capel Street. Self-styled “purveyors of fun stuff since 1993” and one of a chain of nine shops operating in Ireland and the UK, the shop went down in a fearsome blaze that closed the street, just north of the Liffey, for two days. Nirvana have been criticised in the past – not least by other head shop owners – for their late night selling of legal highs, through hatches, in both their Capel Street and South William Street outlets. Well, they won’t be doing it in Capel Street for a long time to come.
“Somebody has taken the law into their own hands as a result of the disgusting media coverage of the past month or so,” Nirvana owner Jim Bellamy told RTÉ radio as he surveyed the damage. “We’ve been tried by the media and found guilty and this is the sentence.”
Bellamy has since declined to give further interviews – something, which may be linked to Dublin Fire Brigade’s reported discovery in the debris of around €475,000 in cash.
While forensic tests to establish the cause of the blaze have yet to be completed, a Fire Brigade source tells Hot Press, “It was almost certainly started by an accelerant.”
Or to put it in more familiar terms: it was almost certainly a torch job.
If that remains to be 100% confirmed, there was absolutely no doubt about what started the fire, five days later, in the Happy Hippy Store on North Frederick Street. Shortly after 9pm, two masked men doused the front of the shop with petrol and even though it was obvious that members of staff were still on the premises, set fire to it. No lives were lost – but they might have been, with the staff having to make their escape through the flames.

GARDA VISIT
Alarms bells had started to ring three weeks earlier when, as reported by Eamonn McCann in the last issue of Hot Press, a group identifying themselves as Republican Action Against Drugs burst into Derry’s Red Star head shop, and shot the owner Ray Cole three times, seriously injuring him. The group had earlier told the Derry Journal newspaper that “some of our members have been members of the IRA, some have not.”
“Hysteria about drugs – and recently about legal highs in particular – makes rational discussion impossible,” Eamonn wrote. “From Prime Time to the Sun to every ‘phone-in programme polluting the airways, dangerous, ignorant opinions are presented every day as high-minded concern for young people. Unrepentant Provisionalism combines with moral frenzy to create the conditions in which low-lifes can believe they have a mandate for maiming and murder.” 
Then on February 9, 60 Gardai were involved in raids on the homes and business premises of suspected dissident republicans in Cork City and County, where the Real IRA claim to have executed 42-year-old drug dealer Ger Stanton before Christmas.
Adding to the climate of fear has been the circulation, in Cork pubs, of a 32 County Sovereignty Movement, leaflet asking people who are “sick of the scourge of drugs in your area” to phone an 087 number.
An idle threat? The accompanying photo of three masked and armed men crouching in a ditch, and Cork 32CSM’s admission that some of the people targeted in those February 9 raids were their members, suggests otherwise.
While there’s been no reference by the Cork 32CSM in their statements to legal highs or head shops, one well-placed Leeside source tells Hot Press that, “It’s only a matter of time before some head-the-ball organisation tries to make a name for itself by targeting a head shop or its employees here. It doesn’t necessarily have to be paramilitaries – a gang of thugs can get together and stick three letters after their name, and all of a sudden there’s a movement. Whatever the supposed ‘cause’, it’s all vigilantism and it’s all illegal.”
The hysteria about head shops has undoubtedly been stirred up by unprecedented media coverage. In particular there is huge concern among those involved in the business about the nature and balance of coverage on RTE’s Liveline. The effect of the media coverage and the attacks – whether related or otherwise – has been to engender a climate of fear. When Hot Press has talked to head shop owners in the past, the majority of them have been happy for us to use their names. That wasn’t the case this fortnight as everybody did their best to keep off the vigilante radar.
“If we’re concerned about attacks, so are the Guards,” one head shop owner in the South-East tells us. “We had a visit – a friendly one for a change! – from a member of the drug squad this week telling us about this bunch in Cork and suggesting that we tighten up our security.
“I don’t know whether it’s paramilitaries pretending to be concerned parents against drugs or some stand-alone lunatic who’s been driven mad by the hysteria that’s been going on but there is no doubt that the people who are responsible for the attacks have been emboldened by the extent of the media coverage, and the feeling that this somehow has some sort of official approval.
“The government obviously enjoy this because it’s a great distraction from everything else that’s been going on,” he continues. “How many big stories have been passed over to keep this relentless agenda going? RTÉ’s supposed to be the State media yet, as far as I can see, there’s no balance to it – it’s all one-sided. I thought that Prime Time at least would make a proper attempt to examine the subject but, no, their show the other day was the same old sensationalist line. No one seems to be prepared to acknowledge that the criminal gangs and the paramilitaries are having their business eroded by head shops.”
Hot Press put accusations of bias to Joe Duffy and Liveline, who responded through RTÉ’s Communications Manager, Joseph Hoban.
“RTÉ and Liveline are satisfied that the programme conducted a fair debate around this matter of public importance,” Hoban insists. “Liveline spoke on air to several head shop owners, head shop workers, head shop customers and Dr. Jim McDaid TD – who is opposed to the closing of head shops – and gave each side of the debate ample time to express its views.
“RTÉ and Liveline take serious issue with and strenuously rejects any allegations that Liveline is in any way responsible for or linked to acts of violence committed by unknown third parties.”

SCHOOL UNIFORM
Away from the media furore, another Dublin head shop owner argues that head shops should be welcomed as a positive influence. “Paramilitaries getting hot under the collar – or the balaclava! – about head shops just proves our point about legal highs reducing the demand for black market ones,” he says. “This ‘protecting the community’ thing is bullshit – they’re just pissed off because their own illegal drug takings are down.”
As to whether head shops are themselves linked to criminality, the same source concedes that in some instances there may be connections of a slightly unorthodox variety. “I know of one guy who’s also involved in prostitution, and another who supplies legal powders to a street dealer, who then passes them off as cocaine – which, unless the coke buyer reports them to the National Consumer Agency, is €60 a gram straight profit. The vast majority of head shop owners are totally legit, but this past eight or nine months a rogue element has definitely crept in.”
The perception that there’s easy money to be made won’t have been helped by the Fire Brigade finding that safe-full of cash in the Nirvana debris.
“The bigger concern there,” continues our Dublin owner, “is that every loolah with a knife is going to think you’ve got half-a-million euro stashed out back, which they can help themselves to. There is clearly money to be made from head shops or otherwise you wouldn’t have 40 or 50 of them dotted around the country, but some of the figures being bandied around in the media are ridiculously over-stated.”
By comparison to the arson attacks in Dublin, the picketing of Castlebar’s Cosmic Closet by 100 placard-wielding locals last week seemed almost quaint. Among those taking to the streets was Mayor of Castlebar Town Council, Michael Kilcoyne, an independent who’s called on Enda Kenny to introduce a private members’ bill to outlaw head shops.
At a public meeting beforehand, a mother alleged that her 15-year-old son had been served in the Cosmic Closet while wearing his school uniform. It’s a charge that the owner, who was also at the meeting, strenuously denies.
In a separate case, another 15-year-old boy from Dublin was remanded in custody on February 22 after breaking a court ban on him going into head shops.
The Children’s Court was told that he was clearly intoxicated when arrested earlier that day in the city centre on robbery and public order charges.
With the media, vigilantes and the government all gunning for them, Irish head shops as we know them, may be living on borrowed time. But if they are, the effect will be to send people back to the streets for illegal drugs. “Is that really what the Government wants?” one shop owner asked. It’s a good question...