This story was first published by Barry as a comment on this article: "A review of "Pushers Out: The inside story of Dublin’s anti-drugs movement"

I was going out with a girl from near Dolphins barn when Josie Dwyer was killed. I used to pass him quite frequently. He was always on the grass outside the flats or hanging around the railings on the bridge. A pathetic sight - he couldn't have weighed more than 7 or 8 stone.

Before he was killed if you walked through Fatima chances are you'd be approached maybe a couple of times and asked if you were looking gear. And it only takes a minute to walk through it. One guy even employed the Moore street selling technique of yelling "come get yer luvverly gear" while riding round on a mountain bike. The drugs thing was just out of control. The bird I went with attended many anti-drug vigils and marches and even favoured shooting the bigger dealers dead. Last I heard of her years ago she was addicted to smoking the stuff herself - just gave up . Beautiful girl too, an awful waste.

Im not surprised to be honest Josie Dwyer got thumped even though it was wrong, especially given the company he was in. People were at the end of their tether with the rate of adddiction. What made that era particularly bad and dangerous for youngsters was the emerging rave scene which itself lead to an explosion in drug use and culture even in the middle class areas. The working class areas got hit even worse.

Youngsters would go to raves and get introduced to the Es which they were assured were safe and non addictive. Sure didnt trendy types like that bollocks Anthony Wilson and others go on TV talking about how great they were. Trendy comedians joked on TV about taking them. The youngsters would be worried about going home off their faces on Es because their parents would see they were hyper. Mnay of their parents were violently anti drugs. The E dealers had a great solution to this - smoke a bit of gear and it'll wind you down before you go home. Nobody'd know any different.