'Cocaine is almost synonymous with grotesque violence', says ER specialist
One of the country’s leading ER specialists has said cocaine is synonymous with grotesque violence.
Dr. Chris Luke, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Public Health in University College Cork, is calling for drug screening of suspects in all violent crimes, particularly murders.
The Consultant in Emergency Medicine, who spent most of the last 40 years working in ERs in Ireland and the UK, said he has first-hand experience of the peculiar blood lust fuelled by cocaine.
“The bottom line is cocaine is almost synonymous with grotesque violence, the sort of violence you see in movies and TV series like Narcos,” he said.
He said the drug can have horrific consequences when taken by sociopaths or psychopaths.
“Its most obvious and familiar effect is it gives people this intense euphoria, what they call the Master of the Universe syndrome.
“The problem is that in the wrong context with the wrong human being you end up with perhaps a sociopathic or psychopathic mindset with the Master of the Universe effect.
A certain number of people become grotesquely violent. I think that is what is fuelling the barbarity we’re seeing now.
While he said the three main drugs linked to violence are alcohol, cocaine and benzodiazepines, cocaine is the drug most linked to shocking levels of violence.
“Without a shadow of a doubt if you’re working in an Emergency Department, the drug that is associated most commonly with extreme violence is cocaine.”
He said another relatively unknown effect is supercharged strength it can give users.
“Basically, you have an often damaged mindset, you may have foetal alcohol syndrome, you may have grown up in a violence household and then you add in the drugs, particularly cocaine.
“I believe they are already a sociopath, but you are turning them into a monstrously supercharged sociopath or psychopath with extraordinary strength.
“Cocaine confers incredible strength, so you need four, five, six men to restrain you even if you are a skinny weakling.
"That’s what cocaine does. That’s what Jekyll and Hyde is about, it is about the effects of cocaine.”
He said the coca plant, which produces cocaine, was linked to human sacrifice in the Andes where it was grown.
“My view is that cocaine is a product of the coca shrub on the side of the mountains in the Andes and that’s where it belongs," he said.
“The local Indians use it to endure the difficulties there, the lack of oxygen and lack of food.
“But it has always been associated in a sense with Inca and Aztec culture and human sacrifice and that hints what I call the blood lust which is so often attributable to cocaine.”
The doctor believes decriminalisation of drugs is nonsensical.
“You have to keep trying to interrupt the supply chain, you have to lock these kinds of barbaric people away and stop with the decriminalisation nonsense because drug-fuelled savages are not interested in what the gentile chattering classes are saying.
“My big, big message is we have to do drug screening for everybody who is arrested in relation to violence.
“I’m absolutely convinced the most important thing in the drug debate is to screen for drug use in people who have been involved in severe violence, particularly murder, I think it would reveal an astonishing level of connection.
“I think you’re talking about 80 to 90% of homicides that will have some amount of alcohol, benzos, cocaine and maybe amphetamines.
"But of all the drugs cocaine is the worst, there is just this peculiar lust for blood.”
