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PRESIDENT Mary McAleese has backed the view of justice minister Michael McDowell that middle-class drug users bear a responsibility for drugrelated violence. In an interview to be broadcast on RTة Radio One's Marian Finucane show this morning, the president says that the recent spate of gangland killings worries her sick and is a "hideous and ugly development".
"The gangland killings don't come out of nowhere so the people who take drugs in a rather nice environment are going to have to stop and say to themselves that they are implicated directly in the killings, " she said. "The level of culpability is much broader than we think.
"It is the people doing cocaine thinking it is a really smart and cool thing to do? that sustain these people."
She also revealed for the first time that members of her family have joined the PSNI, and how she hopes that 2007 will bring a lasting settlement for the North. This comes at a time when crunch talks about Sinn Féin signing up to policing initiatives reach a climax.
She spoke about young fatalities on our roads and how Irish society needs to have a more responsible attitude to drugs and alcohol.
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YOU ARE HERE: 19 March 2007 / tribune.ie / 2006 / 12 / 24
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