Dublin, Drugs and the Culture of "Everyone Knows Everyone" Part 1

Over the last few months I have become increasingly aware of the drug intake of my peers. but lets back up, who am I and what the hell do I know about any of this.

Well for a start, I'm a 21 year old college student from Dublin. Lets call me MadMan the
investigative journalist.

While I can't claim to be a heavy user of any particular drug, I know a great number of
normal people (men and woman) who are increasingly taking more and more drugs. The drugs I am referring to are Weed, MDMA (yipps, yokes, MD, Molly, Ecstasy) and Cocaine.(charlie, sniff, white, snow, blow)

I have spent some time thinking about the topic and here are my thoughts from a person who has a intimate knowledge of some of the effects, sources and the culture surrounding the
intake. I don't want to over state my knowledge, but drugs permeate Dublin society and you would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know what goes on.

Part 1: Weed in Ireland

While the Republic of Ireland has legalised Medical Marijuana late 2016, recreational use is still very much illegal. Someone should probably tell the vast majority of 16 - 24 year old
population in Dublin because smoking weed on a night out or even with "the Lads" is now as common place as smoking a cigarette.

The thing I want to emphasis here is that, I can call 4 different people right now, regular guys, who could sell me weed. If none of my contacts can give it to me (more often than not it's the reliability of the dealer rather than whether they have anything) I simply put the word into my college group chat or my Home Friends group chat and will have at the very least 5 sources. It's the culture of "everyone knows everyone" and I could get my hands on pretty much anything I wanted.

Weed is sold in 25 bags, 50 bags, "oners" (costs 100 euro) or an ounce. The name relates to cost. The quantity of weed for each depends on who you buy it off, how well they know you, if there's a full moon and a whole host of other factors. But the rule of thumb is that a 25 bag will give you roughly 1.5 grams, a 50 bag will give you roughly 3- 3.5 grams and a oner gives you roughly 5-7 grams.

Now I personally have no problem with weed. I'm a bit skeptical about some of the claims of how great it can be for normal people (completely accept there are conditions in which weed can be beneficial) and I know a lot of people who spend far too much money and are stoned too often, but as a whole I think it should be legalised and taxed.

I bring Weed up to illustrate that illegality means very little to the vast majority of Irish
people. Something that is unique to Ireland is this whole "grey area". My foreign friends often remark on this. In places like the UK or Germany, things are legal, and things are illegal. But in Ireland there is a whole notion of "It'll be grand", say nothing, and just keep swimming. A lot of Irish people live their lives on the notion that things are only illegal if you get caught. This comes from a long history of being anti British. (who ruled Ireland until 1949). But staying on point, this has most recently manifested itself into people not being too worried if a substance is illegal.

In Part 2 I will be going into detail about MD and the house music scene which surrounds it and in Part 3 I will talk about cocaine, the (lack of) purity and finally sum up in part 4.