Sir, - Operation Dochas has failed as far as Ballymun is concerned. Even the Gardai admitted in a recent newspaper report: "Up until recently, it was just our own locals that were buying drugs. But we're now getting a lot of what we call tourists' coming in looking, for drugs. These people are buying their drugs off local pushers who are plying their trade openly, in many cases in the shopping centre 50 yards from the local Garda station!
These addicts are coming from areas of Dublin where the local residents, to their great credit, have made their areas drug free zones. Really to address the drug problem in Ballymun we, the people of Ballymun, must unite as other areas of Dublin have done to defeat the pushers. At the end of the day, the only solution to the drug issue is people power. - Yours, etc.,
James Connolly Tower,
Ballymun, Dublin 11.