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WE NEED TO have a very serious think about our drug policy because it is not working. While the use of other more discretionary ‘recreational’ drugs such as cocaine declined somewhat with the recession, there are as many heroin addicts now as there were at the height of the boom and drug crime has increased.
In the case of heroin addiction I believe that we should consider a radically different strategy: medicalising the problem. In short, I believe that we should provide the drugs in medical circumstances, to registered drug addicts, thus relieving the pressure to finance their addiction by criminal and anti-social behaviour which harms them, their family, and society in general.
I am not an instinctive liberaliser of drugs. I am against drugs – but I simply don’t believe that our current policy of adding more harm to the harm they cause has worked.
Heroin addiction is a major fuel for criminality in this country. The money which comes from the supply of narcotics helps finance the gangs that terrorise the poorer communities in our cities.
Opioid addiction is a problem which is increasing in small Irish towns. However we feel about that, opioid addiction and all of the problems which accompany it is something we will have to confront in the coming years.
When someone becomes addicted to an opiate, it profoundly affects the chemical landscape of their brain. When they lack the drug that their body craves, the addict becomes ill. Their symptoms include nausea, vomiting, cramps, insomnia, hallucinations, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, fever, and worse. An addict suffering this illness will do anything to relieve themselves of the effects of withdrawal, whether that be through thievery, prostitution, violence, dealing, or otherwise.
The treatment, in the acute sense, for those symptoms is to take narcotics to avoid going through withdrawal. In the long-term, the treatment is to rehabilitate them away from needing opiates. Looking at the figures, and having talked to addicts themselves, it is clear that what we are doing with methadone just isn’t working for many addicts.
The war we are waging on drugs appears to not be working, not only here in Ireland, but also internationally. This is especially evident in the case of hard narcotics such as heroin and morphine.
There are, by most estimates, twenty thousand opiate addicts in Ireland. About eight thousand are engaged in some way with the methadone programme, of whom about one third are heroin free. The Comptroller and Auditor General notes that about 100 addicts, or 1.25 per cent of the total community who are seeking treatment participate in detoxification and follow-on rehabilitation treatment in any given year.
Since my election to the Seanad last year I have made it my business to look deeper into this problem. I’ve met with charities, drug counsellors, state services, psychiatrists, addicts in active addiction, addicts in treatment, doctors, volunteers, social workers, and all those good people who work on a daily basis with those whose lives have been consumed by addiction. After meeting the children of those whose lives were destroyed when the Dunne family dumped their drugs on Dublin, and finding them trapped in the same addiction of that stole their parents from them, I now think that we have to ask if there is another way.
I have been saying for some time now that we need to rethink our strategy in dealing with opioid addiction here in Ireland. We need to look at the evidence at what is working abroad, and see what we can do to ameliorate the effects that the scourge of addiction is having on our society.
My most recent comments on this issue followed from a discussion on the murder of Shane Geoghegan. Shane was a wholly innocent man, who was hunted down and executed by a 22 year old gunman who had confused him with a member of a rival gang. Shane was shot five times as he made his way home to his girlfriend, because he was a “big” guy like the intended target, his neighbour.
Every war has its collateral damage and on that night the collateral damage was a young man, the captain of his local rugby team. Perhaps if we were winning the war then losing young men like Shane could be justified, though I don’t know how.
Medicalising opiate addiction has been shown to decrease crime, decrease prostitution and decrease homelessness. It would enable us to redeploy Garda resources in other directions. It has been shown to improve the health of addicts, it maximises the retention of patients on health programmes, and the majority of those who enter into heroin-assisted treatment programmes graduate onto other regimes including methadone-assisted programmes and abstinence programmes. This includes those people who have failed to engage with the medical infrastructure to date.
Few things are as traumatic as having a family member succumb to addiction. The impact that they have on those closest to them can be devastating. Ideally the addict would learn to become abstinent, but I would like to see the introduction of policies which will reduce the harm of addiction on the addict and the family while they are travelling towards that goal. If removing the pain of theft from the family home, the fear of overdosing, and the dangers of disease and criminality from these families was all that could be accomplished, that would be no small thing.
I suggest that when somebody presents as an opiate addict, the state should consider registering them as an addict and they should have recourse towards heroin assisted treatment in a clean environment and under medically supervised circumstances.
In return they should lose certain rights. They ought not be allowed to be a member of the Gardaí, the armed forces or the health professions, and they should not be allowed to hold a driving licence. Their addiction already circumscribes their actions so their addiction ought not to impact negatively on the lives of others.
The cost benefit analyses which have been conducted in Switzerland show that while heroin-assisted treatment is expensive, it costs less than half the cost of policing, enforcing, and dealing with the medical consequences of the current regime.
Failing to do something about this problem will not make it go away. Only one in ten opiate addicts are heroin free and only a handful of them become methadone free. We need to build a system which attracts addicts, helps them get out of crime, reintegrates them into society, and has the resources to help those who want to get clean to get clean.
This is not a radical idea. Other countries have been doing this for years, and the evidence points towards some very positive effects in reducing the costs on society imposed by active addiction.
John Crown is a consultant oncologist at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin and a Senator representing the National University of Ireland.
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Until quite recently I thought this whole world of heroin addiction was one that was horrendous, but far away from me. To be honest I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. I’ve had cause to think about it lately.
I was burgled a few months ago by two heroin addicts – woke up while they were in my bedroom. That was terrifying, but more horrific in a way was that I reported to the guards that I thought they were small, slightly built teenagers, maybe 17 or 18, but when they were caught it turned out they were both in their late twenties, just wasted and worn from years of addiction.
They are known addicts with a string of previous convictions, they pleaded guilty and are back yet again in Mountjoy for now, but that has done absolutely nothing to solve anything – either their problems or the problems of the other people who will surely be their victims in the future.
Yesterday afternoon a friend of mine heard a a car screech to a halt outside his house, looked out the window and saw two men get out of a car, walk into his neighbour’s garden, pick up flower pots and start flinging them through the windows of the house, all the while screaming about money and being paid. An ex resident of the house (which is rented) was the intended target, the current resident was petrified and lucky not to have been hurt. Several people got the car reg, so they too may be caught, maybe even jailed, but again it will solve little or nothing.
Neither of these were unusual incidents, the Gardaí are dealing with them day in and day out. Both of us live in ‘respectable’ areas of Kilkenny, not places you would immediately associate with drug criminality, but it’s not a far off problem anymore, it’s too commonplace. I have no idea what the answers are, but these suggestions certainly seem better than what’s happening now, which is basically looking away and hoping it doesn’t come to your door. But it very well might, and soon.
I see addicts on tara st bridge most mornings and there’s a big increase in numbers what’s most worrying is the babies and toddlers with them they use theses children for cash cows from social welfare heroin users need to be sterilized end of offer them cash to do it.
One things is for sure… They have turned their backs on Jesus and have let Satan in.
that,s right and if jesus thought much of them he would use his so call power to help them
@ Debbie
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
@Aoife McFadden. You really need to practice your troll skills, your not very good at it
Oh there is such that I’d like to post on this subject, but I’ll make a single statement…. ” Prohibition failed in the USA and made the Mafia and other organised crime gangs” … Why has the rest of the world failed to learn from this????
The problem is not supply. it’s demand… We NEED to legalise, regulate, clean up the drugs and tax them to treat those addicted….. It would do away with the Drugs related crimes, gangs and murders…..
Sweden, one of the most conservative countries in Europe, has just legalised Grass/hash, Several states in the USA have legalised/decriminalised it too….
On a tax level, we would instead of paying out 100′s of millions of Euro to police the BAN, we could make tax revenue on their sale
I would like to believe Aoife is a troll with nothing better to do However what is almost as scary as the number of heroin addicts is that there are still people who believe that a 2000 year old zombie is commanding a universal order and the same zombie invites the living to feed on his flesh every Sunday. Im sorry that stuff makes Scientology look sane at least that was made on 1950s scfi.
@ Cyril….. We should go to the Churches on Sunday mornings and make citizen’s arrests for cannibalism, That would be a laugh if nothing else… I agree with you on the Cult status of the Catholic Church….. Lemmings spring to mind
Very well said, I totally agree with this article. I said the same thing about 10 years ago. Drug lords will eventually vanish.
10/10 Heroin dealers don’t agree with John Crown.
Unfortunately government work on 4 year plans, and drugs being a hot potato policy it’ll never be passed, we should’ve gone down the Amsterdam route years ago, legalise and isolate and regulate the problem, unfortunately we still have the small minded with their head in the sand in this country
I think as a society we need to first deal with depression in a realistic manner. Our attitude towards all opiates and other drugs( I put alcohol in the category other drugs) is completely out of sync with most countries and it’s not because we like a bit of craic( no pun intended). Although I do admit the war on drugs is a complete and utter failure.
The war on drugs should be renamed, ‘The Unwinnable War’.
Nowhere in the world has it worked. It’s obvious to anyone. But politicians come from areas and ‘circles’ where they never see drugs first hand and thus have no clue about them. Politicians are to drugs, what Eskimos are to space rockets.
I agree! The present system certainly isn’t working. This suggestion would require joined-up thinking and huge cost! Therein lies the problem!
Legalise and regulate drugs. A simple answer to drug related crime, but not a popular choice and certainly not a choice that our swashbuckling politicians would ever consider, simply because our population is so conservative and generally hope that by ignoring social cancers like drugs they will not appear on their doorsteps.
Simply making an activity illegal is not the answer. Drugs will always be a problem as long as people are addicted or choose to take them. The crime associated with drugs will also therefore be a problem as long as they’re illegal. So legalise it and instantly solve two problems.
I agree with John. Regulating and taxing drugs is the only way to beat crime. Get over yourselves folks if you don’t think Irish people from every social backround take drugs. Look at the amount of people who queued up outside the legal high vendors.
Here’s a much cheaper way to solve the problem and not have to legalise drugs. Bring back public floggings. Instead of a junkie getting a year for robbing a granny to get his/her fix, give them fifty lashes and a incremental amount of them for possession of it. It might not get the users of today off it but it would scare people into not becoming the junkies of tomorrow.
You obviously have your head in the clpo
Yeah Sean thats the right thing to do. What a wise man you are.(!) Cop yourself on mate. Thats the problem here, people like you shouting their mouth off. Running people down,when you dont understand the problem at all. If everyone adopted your line of thinking, little ireland would be a much better place! Obviously you have no relatives or freinds who are using illegal drugs. If it was your son or daughter who was using them, you would change your mind and not have the same moronic view as you do now. Its very easy to side with the politically correct minds of this country.
uds
You obviously have your head in the clpo
Yeah Sean thats the right thing to do. What a wise man you are.(!) Cop yourself on mate. Thats the problem here, people like you shouting their mouth off. Running people down,when you dont understand the problem at all. If everyone adopted your line of thinking, little ireland would be a much better place! Obviously you have no relatives or freinds who are using illegal drugs. If it was your son or daughter who was using them, you would change your mind and not have the same moronic view as you do now. Its very easy to side with the politically correct minds of this country, isnt it.
uds
Legalise drugs and prostitution, regulate it in a controlled environment and eliminate the pimps/drugdealers. Use the funds generated from these two vices, to run the centres and have a health clinic or treatment centre dualed with drug taking and prostitution. If we do this, then we take a lot of pressure off the civilian Authorities and do away with drug dealing gangs. But Holy Mary/Joe, would rather stick their head in the septic tank and we’ll never get anywhere in this Country till we expel the Church for a start!
Lots of conflicting approaches to this problem then.
Clearly the article advocates a reduction in the harms associated with addiction to heroin. This is surely a noble pursuit? Whatever people may think about heroin addicts they are still citizens of this country, many/most of them from backgrounds where there isn’t much room to hold such lofty middle class views as displayed here and on most polls and opinion pieces of this sort.
The facts are that use of a substance such as heroin does not mean social harm in and of itself. It is the illegality from which all other problems stem. If you make something illegal you automatically involve everyone associated with it a criminal. But is it illegal because it does harm or because everyone else wants to superimpose their learned morality onto everyone else?
Most people say they think drugs are illegal because of the harm the produce. Yet if you actually check the empirical evidence the physical harms associated with drugs such as ecstasy, LSD and even heroin are utterly negligible. The majority of harm associated with heroin addiction is not the harm to the individual but the harm to society from having an army of strung out junkies robbing, burgling, mugging, neglecting their children and dying from overdoses.
Then you must consider the deaths associated with maintaining the most lucrative source of illegal income to the organised criminal enterprises world wide. As many as 10,000 people a year die in Mexico alone due to the War on Drugs and organised crime. If you totalled the deaths from actual drug use and compared them to deaths from drug dealing/organised crime associated with drug supply I think you will find a massive imbalance.
The idea of keeping drugs illegal isn’t a decision based on harms or anything of the sort. This is a highly politicised issue involving every law enforcement agency and criminal justice system in the world. The drug dealers are not the only ones making a shed load of cash from this trade.
Generally the responses to the problem are narrow minded, reactionary and are given from a position of fear and badly formed opinion. This is not surprising since most information provided in the media is sensationalist and emotive rather than informed, reasoned and pragmatic. Until we as a society both globally and locally realise that intoxication is an inherently human activity that cannot and will not be changed we are doomed to live in a more violent world than we actually need to.
Well said Ross
Very well put Ross. It’s a complex issue but often elicits such narrow hostile reactionary responses. With so many Irish people being part of a household where substance use caused problems, there’s probably a lot of transference going on… Particularily about women. Male addicts with children never invite the distain and anger that female addicts do. (Sterilise them! etc..)
I don’t steal because I was taught not to steal. I don’t fight for the same reason. The children currently being raised by addicts have slim to no chance of escape. I very recently witnessed a man in his 30s explain to young boy of 8 or 9 years old, how to react in a knife fight, both how to attack and to defend. I’ve also seen youngsters sent in to steal alcohol. If I’d had this upbringing, how could I possibly grow up to be a pillar of any community.
I don’t know the answer but my imagination sometimes runs riot!
I, on the other hand, don’t steal because it’s a pretty shitty thing to do.
Yes Spud. But someone had to tell you that. If it was the norm when you were growing up, what then? Nature v nurture. It’s an old story. People who are out to survive will do ANYTHING. Ask any holocaust survivor.
A politician speaking some sense maybe there is hope for this country. While I think the direct legalisation of soft drugs is a no brainer. I had always wondered if there was a way to remove the source of income of the heroin dealer. Seems like a sound approach to me.
Quite simple really. The war on drugs is a fucking fraud that is being deliberately pursued for a number of reasons that dont benefit society at all. Leagilse everything, use the money for education and rehabilitation, take the power away from the unelected criminals and give it to the state. Watch drug usuage rates drop and free the courts, prison system and the guards to catch people that commit crimes, not for people that put stuff into their own bodies at their own discretion. It makes sense but unfortunaly too many powerful people make a lot of money from drugs that they couldnt do if they were legal.
This will not work, we don’t have the will or the resources in this country at the moment to do this. For some reason the rise in heroin abuse seems to go hand in hand with unemployment, however you wish to describe it, we saw the same thing in the 80′s, but many say its worse this time around, maybe because the resources just aren’t there to tackle it or maybe because those behind it are more capable this time around. Who knows?
Very few heroin addicts are engaged with treatment. Well there are methadone centres up and down the country but many disagree with these too and there is evidence that addicts, who must be registered, will often sell their methadone to pay for a “real fix”. As for real treatment centres, where we imagine addicts can go in and be “cured” of their addiction, they’re few and far between in our fine country and for those that do exist waiting times can vary greatly. Plus even if they were there, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. The addicts have to want to be cured, I’m sure many do, but not all.
The State does register heroin addicts for its methadone treatment program and there are some treatment centres but heroin addicts by their nature are often secretive and don’t want to be “registered”, we can’t seriously round them all up and, against their rights and wishes, register them. What then, tattoo them? There’s no doubt our system isn’t working, methadone doesn’t work. We need to invest in specialised garda units, actually ask those garda who do the job for their input instead of telling them what they need and do the same for those who run the few treatment centres, invest in more. The key word here is invest. It will save us as a country billions in the long run. Whats the chances?
Wow, let’s just put a load of sensationalist buzz words together and call it a policy! How is taking away a heroin addicts drivers license or stop him joining the Gardai going to cure him? We have a very good policy in this country for a number of years that’s hardly ever used. It’s called a mandatory 10 year sentence for people caught with over €10,000 of drugs. How many times has a defendant stated they were pay of a debt to their dealer and ended up getting 2/3 years? Anyone caught with any amount of heroin should be sentenced to an automatic 1 year lockdown rehab facility not handed free heroin!
I don’t think your average addict has ten grand’s worth on him, and not every dealer gets caught. So a lot of people buy less than ten grand’s worth from one of the dealers who doesn’t get caught and over time becomes an addict. That’s why that law doesn’t work. And once they come out of a “lockdown rehab” they go back to their own street and take it again. That’s called relapse.
Alzee you’re a troll. Stop your shit stirring and let the grown ups talk.
Why not just decriminalize cannabis and make it available like beer so the police can catch and spend more time keeping the filth that is heroin off the streets. Far too much police time and resources go into finding and harassing pot growers and sellers. Focus on the drugs that weaken our society and lead to increased crime and violence. And the tax and money saved from chasing guys selling pot to their friends can go towards helping heroin addicts and education and rehab.
If we gave greater power and resources to the gardai to tackle the kingpins, there wouldn’t be any drugs in the country. I don’t mind paying taxes to catch druglords, but not to subsidise an addiction that any 5-year-old knows to avoid.
during their war on drugs over the last 40 years the usa have spent over a trillion dollars with little to show for it. there are some problems that just throwin money at won’t solve.
Only Sinn Féin would be stupid enough to legalise drugs.
Insightful.
Lets say forced sterilisation is introduced for troublesome and/or repeat drug offenders. This could potentially stop one offender from creating more future offenders plus deter people from getting involved in drugs, whether taking or selling, in the first place.
One thing I find disheartening is when I see a drugged up “mothers” in the city walking around with children. Those children will grow up in the drug world thus potentially adding to the number of future drug addicts.
Sometimes drastic measures are necessary even though they may not seem moral or politically correct.
“Even if they may not seem moral….”
Sure – eugenics for all those types who we don’t approve of…..
Why stop there ? I reckon we force sterilise all those alcoholics in Ireland with their liver disease and the drain on our public services not to mention the anti-social behaviour and violence associated with alcohol.
Then you can start sterilizing the poor because – well lets face it poor people only produce more poor people.
I reckon we include Gypsies and Travellers ….
This is going well I think – anyone got any more suggestions??
Gingers perhaps ??? :P
You’ve just about got it covered there Ross……maybe throw in Jedward too!
I’m all for ‘drastic measures’.
You left out all the people with diseases and the handicapped. Or what about the Jews? They’re always up to something.
Oh yeah, Simon Cowell et al.
I have so many more. I think you’ve started something Davey.
We should decriminalize the consumption of a small quantity of all drugs like is done in Portugal.
If we penalize hard drugs users after they register, as advocated in John Crown’s article, we just deter them from registering in the first place.
I’m all for a humane approach towards addicts. But to think that organised crime would be lessened by the ‘medicalisation’ of heroin is wrong. We would then need to consider the legalisation of cocaine, marijuana etc etc and whatever new mind altering substances are being created by illegal labs around the world. Looking for an easy solution such as legalisation/medicalisation is no answer to the root causes of addiction is it? Neither is it an excuse for not taking on the gangsters who are building their little kingdoms on the misery of misfortunate addicts and their families.
“. . gangsters who are building their little kingdoms on the misery of misfortunate addicts and their families.”
This line conflicts with what you said before. Gangsters are ‘building their little kingdoms’ BECAUSE drugs are illegal and they are the ONLY sellers in town. Therefore, they get ALL the cash.
I’ve tried to keep it simple for you.
Thanks Kevin for your comment, do you think that legalisatiion of dangerous drugs will get rid of drug gangsterism? I don’t think so.
Alzee thats really clever.
You’re a troll just trying to offend for the sake of it.
A great article by Professor Crown, please listen to him.
I am all in favour of decriminalizing drugs, but the idea that we should dole it out in taxpayer-funded clinics is repulsive. I have my own drug habits to finance!
You mean like the way we do with methadone now?
This is a good article and a logical argument, but unfortunately the “war on drugs” is no more logical than the “war on terror” (with which the “war on drugs” is actually connected in some crucial ways).
There are too many vested interests involved to make this happen, desirable though it would be. For example, the huge incarceration industry in the US would collapse if drugs were legalised. The huge profits made by drug dealers would vanish overnight. Consequently there is a lot of international pressure to ensure that such “logical” arguments won’t succeed. (Where they do, as in Portugal or Switzerland, they are ignored by the media.)
A similar system existed in the UK some decades ago, as is advocated in the article. Addicts were registered and supplied with heroin by the NHS. When it was abolished as part of the “war on drugs”, heroin abuse soared. Go figure,
To ‘medicalise’ ????
What sort of english is that ??
Pronunciation: /ˈmɛdɪk(ə)lʌɪz/
(also medicalise)
verb
[with object]
treat (something) as a medical problem, especially without justification:
doctors tend to medicalize manifestations of distress, prescribing drugs such as sleeping tablets
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/medicalize?q=medicalise
Interesting !
Thank you, I’ve learnt something new.
….still sounds like an american makey-uppey word though
Happy to oblige :)
“makey-uppy” what sort of English is that?
Theres always one …..
DublnNaas: Was it too much trouble to Google the word?
BTW Google is a word, it’s not ‘makey-uppy’. It’s a ‘really wordy’.
Ahhh yes Kevin,
but is it a verb ??
Yes.
Don’t be afraid to Google Google. The internet will NOT blow up.
Whats a substation drug ? Do the ESB have a vested interest ? Surely “they’re” only scum …
@ Chris the atrocities are already been committed on the children of the junkies. But you just keep on worrying about the parents and society will pick up whats left of the children.
You won’t get elected on promising to medicalise any drug, therefore the political will isn’t there to do anything of the sort.
definetely in agreement with this.
In the past year or so (after moving to a school in the centre of Limerick city) I have been exposed to clearly rising numbers of drug addicts. Without a shadow of a doubt has the recession to do with this, and the current drugs policy is in no way helping. Very interesting debate above.
Heroin was legal until about 1910, and commentators should read the reasons why it was criminalised. Partly because Disraeli’s sister was an addict. The reason I believe the recent visit of the Chinese delegation to Irl and not the UK is linked to Britian’s opium wars. Heroin is at the end of a chain, usually starting with tobacco, via Cannabis.
Legalizing Heroin is not going to increase revenue, it costs economically & socially.
What we need is to enforce the laws already there. We destroyed the Customs service to save money, a kilo stopped by them is 100k off the streets. We need to fund communities to use the law through employing local solicitors to take social cases to court e.g. Noise, disturbance.
We really need to stop addicts claiming disability and ‘sitting’ at home, we need programmes which require 7 day attendance away from home, and which move around so that social contacts aren’t made locally for supply.
As for the comments on religion, the State relies on free rehab and time given by these men, many old working 24/7 for their community.
We can go home and complain, they stay at the coleface permanently.
Maybe make dealing especially for the big drug dealers a Capital Offence? Punishable with the death sentence?
Contraversial? No, not really. Just as contraversial as legalising or supplying Class A drugs thru the Medical Profession.
Maybe if they got rid of all the senators who contribute nothing to the economy there might be money to help addicts. Failing that if you’re going to give them free drugs at the State’s expense why not do it properly and give them a one off for an overdose.
have your say