Nearly 50,000 crack pipes have been given to drug users by the HSE over the past five years.
€65,000 has been spent on purchasing and distributing 49,021 of them since 2016.
The number of people using crack cocaine continues to rise as there was a 277% increase in pipes distributed in the same time period.
The Irish Times also reports, since 2016 the HSE has given out just under three million needles at a cost of around 800,000 thousand euro.
