Madam, - In March 2003 I wrote to your paper about the "devastating social consequences of cocaine misuse in Ireland". I said it was "imperative that we learn the lessons of recent epidemics of cocaine misuse in North America and the United Kingdom" so that we might "recognise the common thread in so many cases of unprovoked homicide and sudden death in custody".
Three years later, I would speculate that the urban savagery which led to Donna Cleary's recent murder, the subsequent death in custody of a suspect in her killing and the arrest of a major cocaine dealer who was using a toddler exemplify the agonising lessons yet to be learned before we comprehend why cocaine poses the most terrifying threat of all to contemporary Irish society. - Yours, etc,
Dr CHRIS LUKE, Emergency Department, Mercy University Hospital, Cork.