Her death, like Veronica's, highlights spectre of drugs
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The stark truth is that there will always be money to be made selling cocaine in Ireland
IT'S been over 11 years since the shocking and untimely death of a young Irish woman has generated such a blaze of publicity across the media.
The last time this happened was the murder of Veronica Guerin on June 26, 1996.
On the face of it, the two women have nothing in common; Veronica was a crusading investigative journalist who shone a beam of light into the dark and vicious underworld of criminal activity in Ireland.
She was a happily married mother of one in her late 30s. She wasn't a big drinker or a party-girl -- she got her kicks from her work, her family and regular fixes of gossip.
Katy French, on the other hand, was a product of our celebrity-fixated culture; she was a beautiful, ambitious, sparky 24-year-old who pursued the limelight with a dedication that was both irritating and amusing.
Compassionate
In less than a year, she had become a one-woman soap opera; but there were signs that underneath the froth was a smart, compassionate person who had begun the search for a more meaningful role to play.
But then all her early promise, her zest for life and her plans and hopes were snuffed out with her desperately sad death on Thursday.
However, both Veronica and Katy's deaths do have one factor in common -- drugs. Veronica Guerin fought a one-woman war against the evil thugs who imported heroin and cocaine into this country, while Katy openly admitted to having used cocaine.
While going about her business, Veronica saw the misery and hardship at the coalface of addiction in the less affluent parts of Dublin.
She railed against the gangsters who made so much money on the back of so much suffering. She named them and shamed them and was gunned down on a bright summer's day for her courage.
Katy French was a member of the Celtic Tiger Coke Set, 11 years after Veronica's death the drug is now coursing rapidly through the bloodstream of all classes of Irish society.
Unlike heroin, which is an unglamorous drug used largely by the sector of society bypassed by the Celtic Tiger, cocaine has become a lifestyle accessory for the affluent and feckless.
It's been re-branded as "nose candy", a glossy product sold by middle-class dealers to middle-class clients.
It's even (wrongly) perceived as a diet aid for those who want to stay thin, it's something that allows you to drink more, stay out later.
It makes you feel invincible. It's a bit of harmless fun.
What a sly marketing ploy. Not only has the powder itself been diluted or "stepped on" many times before it changes hands for the final time, so too has the chain of sale.
Buying a gram of coke in a city nightclub from a well-dressed, well-spoken pal is a whole world away from the realities of the killing fields of Colombia or even the violent drug-turf wars of west Dublin.
But it's not a world away at all -- it's a grim and vicious circle which links the deaths of Veronica Guerin and Katy French.
In the aftermath of the journalist's death -- and that of Garda Gerry McCabe -- public outrage finally penetrated the inertia of the Government of the time to take on the criminals who had murdered innocent citizens in order to protect their lucrative trade and -- equally importantly -- to send out a clear message that the drug overlords were not to be messed with.
Out of the country's outrage came the formation of the Criminal Assets Bureau in August 1996 with a mandate to hit organised crime where it hurt -- in their bank accounts bulging with money made from the drug trade.
But the stark truth is that there will always be money, and lots of it, to be made selling cocaine in Ireland until the penny finally drops with the national consciousness. Cocaine is a dangerous, nasty drug that attacks users from the inside, battering away at their hearts, livers, immune system, nervous system, brain cells.
It is no respecter of social class, sex or age.
In the same month that Katy admitted to using the drug, 21-year old Waterford man Kevin Doyle lapsed into a coma and died after eating cocaine at a party.
Well, the party's over now for everyone and it's time for the clean-up to begin.
The Government can throw money and resources galore at this problem, but the only effective revolution will come about, like so many revolutions do, from the will of the people.
And the people this time aren't the legislators, the police, the judiciary.
They are the models, the accountants, the teachers, the students, the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who take cocaine for a bit of a laugh; who buy a gram off a friendly face and who fail to see the blood-stained hands behind their "harmless" buzz.
The stark truth is that everyone who inhales a line has some part to play in the death of Kevin Doyle, and perhaps, in the death of Katy French.
Everyone who buys it and condones it is tainted by association.
It's time to stand up and be counted. Just say no. Rosa Parks did, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, and look what happened.
That's how revolutions begin.
- Lise Hand
