Pubdate: Wed, 31 Aug 2005
Source: Belfast Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/42
Author: Lindy McDowell

DRUG DEALERS CAST THEIR DEADLY SHADOW OVER ALL

In One Way It's Hard To Imagine What The Family Of Matthew Lyle Are Going 
Through Today.

In another, it's all too easy.

Matthew who was 28, died this week from a suspected drugs overdose. His 
devoted parents have lost their only son, his loving sisters their only 
brother. His wider family has lost a young man who like so many victims of 
Ulster's drugs culture would otherwise have had a bright, productive and 
happy future ahead of him.

It is, as I say, all too easy to imagine their grief and devastation.

And their anger.

For, as Matthew's father says in words that will resonate with all too many 
families in Northern Ireland: "Our anger and bitterness is directed at 
those who prey on young people like Matthew knowing their weaknesses and 
callously seeking them out to push their poison for profit."

Matthew's father David is managing director of Lyle Bailey International, 
the firm behind award-winning advertising campaigns such as the iconic 
"Don't Suffer It, Change It" commercials at the height of the Troubles to 
more recent road safety campaigns which have similarly won global acclaim.

But no-one, no family, is immune from the threat posed by those who, as 
David Lyle rightly says, peddle poison for profit.

It's a scenario that haunts families in many other places outside Northern 
Ireland of course.

But within Northern Ireland the pressures have a particular edge.

For the growth of the drugs trade here owes its spectacular "success" not 
just to the paramilitary organisations which exert control over it, but 
also, let's be honest, to a Government which in seeking to toady to 
terrorists has operated an official policy of turning a blind eye to much 
of their money-making enterprise.

There is a bit of a myth in Northern Ireland that the jurisdiction of 
paramilitary organisations and the drug dealing gangs they spawn and run is 
confined almost exclusively to those working class areas and estates whose 
names are familiar from regular appearance in the daily headlines.

 From time to time I meet people who'll express concern about something 
they'll have read about paramilitaries in the papers.

Thank God we don't live under their control, is the subtext to their 
expressed dismay.

But this is fallacy.

For in Northern Ireland we all live under the shadow of paramilitary gangs 
on all sides. Their combined malign influence spreads well beyond their 
obvious power bases.

Far from being made obsolete by the so-called peace process these gangsters 
have been allowed to consolidate their criminal, drug-dealing empires.

People talk about the need to decommission arms. But in closing down 
paramilitaries plc it will take a much greater decommissioning.

One that will involve the winding up of mafia businesses that make Al 
Capone look like Del Boy.

And this isn't going to happen.

It isn't going to happen because the Government still sees fit to liaise 
with paramilitaries. When it suits the Government's policy of appeasement, 
illegal terrorist organisations can be referred to as community activists. 
Funding for areas of need may be channelled their way. God knows, it won't 
be long before the terrorists themselves are policing their own areas.

This official soft soaping is hardly a prescription for eradicating the 
drugs trade that is currently among the paramilitaries' best earners.

The PSNI's Drug Squad may be scoring notable and commendable strikes 
against individual drugs lords - but the organisations controlling the 
trade are suffering no real diminution of their control over it. Or their 
profit from it.

While the Government continues to tolerate paramilitary activity as if it 
was some sort of community service, the terrorist drug trade is able to 
operate with virtually official sanction.

Gangsterism and terrorism have been institutionalised in Northern Ireland. 
Historians will one day be able to quantify the cost of this to society.

The human cost is the tragic waste of young lives like Matthew Lyle. How 
many more?

Those who peddle drugs should indeed be the focus of our anger.

But so too should a Government which has done so very little to stamp down 
on them.

A Government which for some specious political profit continues to allow 
paramiltaries to continue to push their poison.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom