That’s according to the Head of Counselling at Tabor Fellowship addiction treatment centre in Cork, Con Cremin.
He was reacting to figures released by the Health Research Board which show the number of people seeking treatment for cocaine addiction in Cork has nearly trebled in the last five years.
The report details that after alcohol, the main problem drugs in Cork are opioids such as heroin and codeine, as well as cocaine, cannabis and benzodiazepines.
Speaking to RedFM News, Con Cremin says that cocaine addiction has wide ranging negative consequences:
"There is, in more recent years, a significantly increased tolerance in some quarters of society at least around the use of cocaine. It's very normalised for a lot of people but having said that, many people who use cocaine get into difficulty with addiction, and with other aspects of their life. The big issue with cocaine is that people can use a lot of it, and have a very big appetite for it, which then in turn causes huge financial problems, very often legal problems, people take a lot more risk to acquire their substance but also to use it."
