Gangs are targeting rural families demanding payments for their children's drug debts.
Some farmers are even being forced to sell cattle to pay off the debt, Irish Country Living journalist Jacqueline Hogge told Behind the Story.
Ms Hogge spoke to families and with HSE addiction specialist Joe Tracey, who attended a meeting in Craughwell, Co Galway recently.
"The issue is something that’s causing a lot of concern locally down there," she said.
'They know there is wealth’
Ms Hogge said what she heard at the event last week was "frightening", noting that it is believed that drug intimidation "has become more lucrative for drug dealers than the sale of the drugs themselves".
"More and more young people seem to be racking up significant drug debt that these gangs are then targeting families for," she said.
"They’re targeting people where they know there is wealth – the big house in the countryside or the farm with the livestock."
Ms Hogge said the use of the drug of ketamine is on the rise in rural communities, with samples being sent to the National Drug Treatment Centre having been "cut with cattle drench".
Cattle drenching is the process of administering liquid on cows to protect them from parasites such as worms, lice and flies.
Max Verstappen
Hosts Fran McNulty and Eamon Horan also discuss the issue of awkward press encounters following an incident at a press conference ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend.
Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen ordered a journalist to ‘get out’ of a press conference on Thursday night.
Four months earlier, at a different event, the journalist had asked Verstappen a question he did not like and the former world champion driver remembered it.
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