Sir, - In his response to Breda O'Brien's excellent article on "Moving beyond maintenance" (Opinion, June 24th), Dr Kieran Harkin (June 29th) makes a number of surprising claims. He states that, once opiate addiction is established, permanent and irreversible neuro-physiological damage occurs, rendering the person prone to relapse indefinitely. He doesn't add how this damage is assessed or who reaches this conclusion while, presumably, the addicted young person is still abusing drugs. We can presume that he means a doctor, who subscribes to this theory, makes this devastating diagnosis. [continues 341 words]
The use of "scare tactics" in public information campaigns on drugs is ineffective and possibly counter-productive, the National Youth Council of Ireland has said. In a submission to the National Drugs Strategy review committee, the youth organisation said such tactics did not "respect their target audience and have been shown to be at such variance to young people's own knowledge and experience as to render them useless". The group made a number of other recommendations for consideration in the drafting of the next Government drugs strategy. [continues 181 words]
COLOMBIA: The Colombian government came to the gathering of 27 nations and several international agencies in Madrid last Friday hoping to raise $1 billion for Plan Colombia, President Andres Pastrana's blueprint intended to bolster Colombian peace and counter-narcotics efforts. But when the meeting ended, only Spain, Norway and Japan had committed funds for a plan that the majority of Colombia's European allies, together with Canada, find dangerously incoherent. The Inter-American Development Bank and the Andean Corporation for Development also jointly contributed credits worth $300 million. With an additional offer of $131 million from the United Nations, the government received a total of $621 million. [continues 307 words]
More than one prisoner in five began to inject drugs while in prison, according to a recently published study. Drug use and infection with hepatitis C are endemic among the State's prisoners, the study carried out by researchers at the department of community health and general practice in Trinity College Dublin reveals. The most alarming statistic from a public health perspective is that 21 per cent of prisoners first injected drugs in prison. And 71 per cent of respondents reported sharing needles in prison. [continues 149 words]
In Madrid on Friday, European Commission officials and EU ministers will discuss their response to "Plan Colombia", an ambitious programme, backed by both Washington and Colombia's President Pastrana, which aims to eradicate the country's twin plagues of drugs and violence writes Ana Carrigan COLOMBIA: Its critics fear, however, the plan may have the reverse effect. The EU is being asked to contribute $1 billion towards pacification projects. Last week, the US Senate voted through $1.3 billion in military aid for the counternarcotics side of the programme. [continues 411 words]
A renewed appeal has been made for heroin users to be vigilant following the announcement yesterday of three new cases of the illness which has led to eight deaths in Dublin in recent weeks. The latest victims of the unidentified illness, believed to be caused by injecting contaminated heroin, are recovering in a Dublin hospital. They bring to 22 the number of cases confirmed in the eastern region to date. The victims, two males and one female, reported the onset of the illness in mid-June - a month after the first infected heroin users were admitted to hospital. [continues 207 words]
The abuse of alcohol is so widespread among young people that it is "commonplace" for pupils to miss school completely or fail to participate in class because of hangovers, second-level teachers have claimed. The teachers say that while heroin abuse is confined to a small number of young people, the abuse of alcohol, cannabis and ecstasy is common throughout the State. The teachers call for a shift in Government policy from concentrating almost exclusively on deprived urban areas where heroin is prevalent to also tackling the problem of soft drugs and alcohol in every "town and village across the country". [continues 310 words]
A full-time Garda drug squad has been set up in the Westmeath/Longford Garda division, based in Athlone. The new squad is part of the response to a report on the priorities the public wants placed on crime. Last week, ecstasy and other drugs with a street value of pounds 4,000 were uncovered in Athlone, and in a follow-up operation in two licensed premises more drugs were seized. While the authorities would not give any operational details of the squad, it is understood that eight officers will work full time on drug-related crime in the area. [continues 248 words]
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, asked: "Why are so many, particularly young people, bored in circumstances more affluent than obtained even in the recent past?" when he opened the "Beyond Maintenance" seminar on treating drug abuse at Clonliffe College in Dublin yesterday. He said there was a great need for "the reflection that will enable us to address the deeper causes of drug-taking" and asked: "what is the connection between boredom and drug-taking?" No doubt there were many different sociological, psychological and philosophical ways of approaching this matter, he said. [continues 604 words]
US intervention in the conflict in Colombia could have disastrous consequences for the entire Andean region, writes Ana Carrigan THE US/COLOMBIA: Potomac fever has overtaken US Latin American policy once again - this time triggered by the failure of Washington's "drug war" in a presidential election year, and corporate lobbying by US arms manufacturers and oil men. The result: last week's US Senate vote to approve $1.3 billion in new military aid for Colombia, which will recklessly propel the United States into the vortex of Colombia's civil war, burying the fragile peace hopes with frightening implications for the entire Andean region. The vote was immediately hailed by the US drug czar, Mr Barry McCaffrey, as "a crucial step . . . that will greatly enhance counter-drug efforts in Colombia". Mr McCaffrey should know. It was his announcement of "a drug emergency" in Colombia last summer that pushed the panic button in the Clinton White House. [continues 709 words]
Drug treatment centred on methadone maintenance was "social control and then abandonment", an addiction lecturer told yesterday's conference. Ms Jane Wilson, researcher in addiction and mental health at the University of Stirling in Scotland, said health professionals working with drug addicts should be sensitive to the likelihood of a background of childhood trauma and psychological problems. Returning a detoxified addict to the environment in which they formed their addiction, without recognising that they would need support and possibly psychological treatment, was a recipe for the "revolving-door" syndrome, she said, where the addict might relapse over and over again. [continues 253 words]
Sir, - As a family doctor who has been deeply involved in caring for patients addicted to heroin and for their families in Dublin over the past 10 years, I have always welcomed your newspaper's enlightened approach to the problem of drug addiction. This approach is in general to address the fundamental causes of drug addiction and to explore appropriate management strategies. Breda O' Brien's article entitled "Moving beyond maintainence [sic] in drug addiction" (Opinion, June 24th) was one such excellent article, which once again drew our attention to the root causes of drug addiction in Irish society. [continues 377 words]
Sir, - One of the Dublin communities most devastated by heroin is St Michael's Estate in Inchicore. The local national school, St Michael's CBS, has been told by the Department of Education and Science that it has two pupils fewer than the required number to retain its present teaching staff. The school principal, Mr Tom Mullins, in a letter to Mr Eoin Ryan TD (the Minister with responsibility for drugs), states: "We find it appalling that in spite of all the work we have put in and the huge level of need that all are now acknowledging is in the area, because our roll numbers are down by just two pupils we must now lose a teacher". [continues 378 words]
Crimes linked to drug abuse have engendered high levels of fear among communities in the Ballyfermot/Cherry Orchard area of Dublin, a survey suggests. The survey was conducted by a group of local people with the help of the Vincentian Partnership for Justice. Some respondents who agreed to fill in the anonymous survey form later withdrew because "they were afraid that they might be recognised through their responses and action taken against them". All age groups agreed that closer involvement by parents with their children and more gardai are crucial to combating the drugs problem in the area. [continues 196 words]
On Saturday June 3rd a large, expensive advertisement appeared in newspapers. In bold letters it warned all heroin-users not to inject. It went on: "If you wish to have treatment go to your local Health Board Addiction Centre where you will be immediately assessed." A young man who is a heroin addict and who lives in Father Peter McVerry's hostel rang the 24-hour freephone Drugs Helpline number. He was given an appointment for the next day. Father Peter McVerry was impressed, particularly since this was a bank holiday weekend. The young man went and was told that he would be written to about treatment. Some three weeks later he still has heard nothing. Needless to say, Father McVerry is no longer impressed. [continues 1012 words]
Officials of the EU member-states, the European Commission, Switzerland, Canada and Japan are meeting in London today with the Colombian government to discuss President Andres Pastrana's appeal for massive aid. Mr Pastrana is asking the European Community to contribute $1 billion to his $7.5 billion development plan, known as "Plan Colombia", to support Colombia's peace process and combat trafficking in narcotics. Today's meeting will enable the participants to familiarise themselves with the details of the Plan Colombia programmes they are being asked to fund. [continues 553 words]
It looks as if the mystery of the hitherto unexplained deaths of some heroin addicts in Dublin, Glasgow and the north of England in recent weeks is just about unravelled. Investigators in Scotland appear to have established that a species of bacterium known as Clostridium - possibly Clostridium novyi, a less familiar member of the species whose number include the lethal causative agents of botulism, gas gangrene and tetanus - must have contaminated the batch of heroin which some heroin addicts injected into their muscles. [continues 466 words]
Sir, - I work in the field of adult education in some of the less salubrious parts of town and write to concur with the views expressed by John Gallagher (June 12th). Heroin is indeed a scourge affecting all tiers of society. The drug problem has tainted communities such as Ballyfermot and Inchicore as being drug-ridden areas to be avoided at all cost. It is difficult to change this reputation and some of my students believe they have no chance of getting a job interview because of the address shown on their CVs. [continues 151 words]
Sir, - Paul Delaney (June 13th) claims there is "growing evidence" of the "recreational" use of heroin by "well-heeled people" in what he describes as "a relatively safe manner". We would be interested in perusing this evidence but doubt that he can refer us to any particular study. He also asserts that what are required to address the heroin problem in Dublin are intervention strategies that prevent "recreational" users of the drug in marginalised communities progressing beyond occasional use to dependency. Heroin use is not a problem, it appears, it is just that working-class kids cannot handle the drug as well as their more affluent counterparts. [continues 153 words]
Sir, - I agree with Ald Michael Conaghan (June 10th) that heroin use is firmly anchored in distinct socio-economic settings and that heroin is synonymous with the "official neglect over generations [that has] created conditions of educational, economic and social exclusion". However, in accepting this, let us not inadvertently send the message that, while we grapple with the bigger picture of long term change in our society, young people from marginalised communities will have to engage is some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by becoming drug addicts. [continues 544 words]
Sir, - An uneasy feeling gripped me on reading Kevin Myers's Irishman's Diary of June 7th. This is not unusual, I hasten to add. It is a given. Always. The man annoys me. I usually avoid his self-deluding, overly obsessive diatribes in the same way that I try to sidestep "eccentrics" with conspiracy theories painted on their lunch-boards. However, the particular uneasiness I experienced last week was in acknowledging that every word he had written on the subject of drug wars and the sale of heroin was reasonable and logical. [continues 59 words]
Sir, - John Gallagher (June 12th) tells it as it is: families destroyed, children without either parent; grandparents often raising those children left behind. Legislation could be passed very quickly to enable the granting of an enormous pension to Mr Hugh O'Flaherty. That, too, tells it as it is. I am reminded of an old Portuguese saying: "Oh God, that bread and butter are so dear, and blood and flesh so cheap." - Yours, etc., Paddy Morton, PC, Rialto, Dublin 8. [end]
Sir, - The recent upsurge of deaths from heroin abuse in the south-west inner city is alarming, but it should not hide the fact that over a long period of time a number of young people have been dying each week from the same cause in the same area. The debate about pure/bad heroin is not new. Quite a number of years ago at a public meeting, when people complained about bad heroin, one well known drug pusher got up and said: "You will find no rat poison in my heroin. The heroin I sell is pure." He was applauded by some people in the hall. [continues 504 words]
The answer to the medical mystery behind the rash of deaths among heroin users here and in Britain would appear to have come in Cardiff yesterday. A team lead by Prof Brian Duerden at the Public Health Laboratory Service unit (PHLS) in the Welsh capital identified the bug that has killed heroin users in Britain as clostridium novaea, a member of the clostridium family. Clostridium is an anaerobic bacterium, meaning it flourishes in the absence of oxygen. It can exist, however, in a kind of "suspended animation" as spores in dust or soil. If heroin is cut with soil or dust containing the bacterium, once injected into the oxygen-free environment of body muscle, it can multiply and produce potentially fatal toxins which attack the body. However, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Regional Health Authority here said its department of public health was still trying to establish the cause of the illness here. [continues 348 words]
Police in Britain are playing down a theory that adulterated heroin which has been linked with the deaths of heroin-users in the UK and Ireland could have been contaminated in Dublin before being sent to Britain. The West Midlands Police Force said yesterday there was a "strong suggestion" that the deaths of three heroin-users in the past week were linked to recent deaths in the Republic, Scotland and the north-east of England. However, police refused to speculate on media reports that the adulterated heroin arrived in Britain from Ireland. [continues 313 words]
"I was burning up like a furnace, down on all fours like I was going to collapse. With heroin you can get pins and needles that last about 10 seconds, but this lasted about 20 minutes. Oh, I was freaked out." Mr Alan Carass (43) was recalling the evening three weeks ago when he and his best friend, Paddy Kane, injected some of the contaminated heroin. Both homeless, the men were "partners", said Alan, who shared everything - money, food, heroin. The heroin they shared near the canal at Baggot Street killed Paddy and put Alan in hospital for three weeks. [continues 179 words]
In six cases brought under the 1999 Criminal Justice Act, the courts have opted to impose sentences lower than the mandatory 10-year minimum on the grounds of exceptional and specific circumstances. Jim Cusack reports Senior gardai are expressing concern that the courts appear to be rejecting one of the Government's main anti-drugs initiatives, the mandatory 10-year sentence for having drugs worth more than pounds 10,000. Six cases have come before the courts since the legislation was enacted in May last year. In none has the mandatory sentence been handed down, even though in two cases the value of the drugs was put at over pounds 2 million. [continues 652 words]
The age at which first-time drug users are charged and brought before the courts should be raised from 18 because many young people caught using drugs do not reoffend, a Garda inspector has said. Det Insp Tom Duggan, of the Garda Divisional Drugs Unit in Waterford city, was speaking last night at the second of a series of regional meetings to review the national drugs strategy. The conference was told drugs were found in the smallest villages in Ireland. He said persons under 18 were at present cautioned by their local Garda superintendent under the Garda Juvenile Liaison scheme if they broke the law. He believed this scheme should be extended to include first-time drug offenders over this age. [continues 617 words]
The introduction of a smart card computerised system allowing heroin addicts to receive methadone treatment from any chemist, rather than one designated chemist, would aid the treatment of rural addicts, according to a doctor in the midlands. In a submission to the National Drugs Strategy, Dr Patrick Troy, who worked to establish two methadone treatment centres in the Midlands Health Board region, said tying an addict's supervised consumption of methadone to their local chemist often prevented stabilised users from getting work. [continues 305 words]
The fact that drug users are denied the legal protection afforded to other consumers is a source of shame for any nation aspiring to the basic tenets of civilisation. I agree with every word Kevin Myers said. Is there "rehab" for this affliction, do you think? - Yours, etc., Brian Hollywood, Malone Avenue, Belfast 9 Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n836/a02.html [end]
Starting in Cork yesterday, the Government has embarked on a series of meetings throughout the State to hear what people think should be done about drugs. Kitty Holland sets the scene Serious drug abuse has spread beyond Dublin, with cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis abuse in particular having doubled in some areas between 1997 and 1998. And no one is in any doubt that drug-users are getting younger, and using for longer. Waiting lists for methadone maintenance remain, more than three years after a ministerial task force recommended a target "to eliminate all waiting lists [for methadone maintenance centres in Dublin] during 1997". [continues 869 words]
Young people in almost every town and city in Ireland were experimenting with drugs and if the problems which developed in Dublin were to be prevented from spreading, effective measures and new structures to implement them would have to be developed, the Minister of State for Tourism, Sport and Recreation has said. Speaking in Cork at the first meeting of a regional consultative forum to review the National Drugs Strategy, Mr Eoin Ryan said that in the past the drugs strategy had focused on areas where drug abuse was most obvious - such as Dublin - but young people throughout the State were experimenting with drugs, such as cannabis and ecstasy, and something needed to be done. [continues 399 words]
In Cork city the drugs trade, mainly cannabis, is controlled by four families well known to the authorities. The arrival of the Criminal Assets Bureau has given gardai new tools to use against the known "drug barons", and there have been a number of successes in recent years, resulting in seizures and convictions. However, the main players in the Cork drug scene are still at large and have managed so far to avoid arrest or conviction. According to Garda sources, inquiries under the CAB legislation may soon lead to convictions. [continues 202 words]
A consultant in Glasgow has said he hopes to have found a cause by next week for the mysterious deaths and illnesses among heroin-users in Scotland. Dr Laurence Gruer, a consultant in public health medicine with the Greater Glasgow Health Board, said specialists in Glasgow and Atlanta were focusing on a bacterium which grows in the absence of oxygen. When drugusers inject heroin into dead tissue or muscle, instead of veins, they are susceptible to the bacterium. "Some people are working through the weekend to push things on as fast as they can," Dr Gruer said. Dr Joe Barry, a public health specialist with the Eastern Regional Health Authority, said they were not as definite about the cause of the illness, which has led to eight deaths in Dublin. [continues 340 words]
Galway's hyperactive social scene is matched by a vibrant "recreational" drink and drugs culture. Ecstasy, at pounds 10 a tablet, and cannabis resin are the main substances on the market in the clubs around the city centre and Salthill, but almost every substance is available - and almost every town in counties Galway and Mayo has some level of activity. Money does not seem to be a problem for some of the young people, who can spend pounds 50 on tablets during a night out. [continues 310 words]
Alcohol abuse should be included in the National Drugs Strategy remit, according to a review submission from the inter-agency drug group in the North Western Health Board region. With only an estimated five people receiving methadone treatment from GPs in the north-west, the inter-agency group stressed that legal substances such as inhalants, prescribed drugs and alcohol should be seriously addressed. The group, which includes health board workers, gardai, customs officials, probation officers, teachers, parents, vintners and youth groups, also pointed to young people's anecdotal evidence that cannabis, ecstasy and small amounts of cocaine are available in the region. [continues 222 words]
As in other parts of the State, adolescent abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs is a problem in the mid-west, and the drug culture is embedded in third-level student life. Organised crime in Limerick is small-scale, but, almost inevitably, it tends to be tied up with drugs and cigarette smuggling. So far this year, there have been seizures of cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine. Det Garda Oliver Stapleton, of the Limerick drugs squad, says there is not as yet a major problem with hard drugs, but regular cocaine and heroin seizures leave gardai in no doubt that there is a local market for them. [continues 271 words]
It is timely that the Government should undertake a review of the nation's strategy on how to deal with the many problems of substance abuse, and appropriate that it is seeking submissions from all relevant and concerned parties in this review. Something of the order of 100 written submissions have already been received and it is likely that the national drugs strategy team, and the 13 local drugs task forces set up in those areas where drug abuse has already ravaged whole communities, will learn from many of them. [continues 586 words]
Sir, - Fintan O'Toole's column of June 3rd contains a faulty analysis of Dublin's drug problem. The following sentence, "What we have, then, are huge numbers of recreational drug users, some of whom go on to become addicts", is in my view, very misleading as it depicts heroin addiction here as an outcome of recreational drug use. Dublin has two broad categories of drug abuse. First and foremost heroin use is firmly anchored in distinct socio-economic settings. Official neglect over generations created conditions of educational, economic and social exclusion. This is the real trigger of Dublin's heroin epidemic. [continues 177 words]
Sir, - Thank goodness for the rock of commonsense which is Fintan O'Toole, and his article on our attitude to heroin and other drugs. For it is time, surely, for us to "grasp the nettle", radically modify our thinking, and realise that the drugs problem is not going to go away of its own accord. I totally agree with P. Bowler (June 5th) when he says that anti-drugs legislation has proved itself to be, in the main, ineffective, possibly even encouraging the use of drugs by glamorising the situation; and drugs are as procurable today as if they were available from every corner shop. [continues 345 words]
Sir, - Highlighting the plight of the "underclass" of heroin abusers and the prevalence of drug abuse among young people in our society is both worthy and timely. Your Editorial of June 3rd and Fintan O Toole's article of the same day deal very well with the complexity of the problem and the dilemmas facing those of us involved in treating heroin addicts. There are, however, two issues which I wish to clarify. Firstly, there are no restrictions on the numbers of GPs allowed to treat heroin addicts. [continues 164 words]
Sir, - Fintan O'Toole's thoughtful article on the need to at least seriously consider State prescribing of heroin to addicts makes for depressing reading (The Irish Times, June 3rd). In one critical regard it is also flawed. The phenomenon of cellular tolerance - the increasing dose required for effect as sensitivity diminishes - means that there is no ceiling on the amount of heroin that will eventually be required by the addict. If, as with every other drug, the medical establishment implements a therapeutic ceiling, we are back in the situation of a black-market demand for the drug. [continues 139 words]
The Eastern Regional Health Authority has denied reports that a new case of the mysterious heroin-related illness was expected to be confirmed today in the region. A spokeswoman said the situation was under review but there had been no changes in the number of patients identified. Currently 15 cases had been confirmed in the Dublin area, of whom eight have died. None of Dublin's major hospitals has reported any new cases. Thirty-one addicts in Ireland and Britain have died from the condition. [continues 211 words]
Your Editorial of June 3rd and Fintan O Toole's article of the same day deal very well with the complexity of the problem and the dilemmas facing those of us involved in treating heroin addicts. There are, however, two issues which I wish to clarify. Firstly, there are no restrictions on the numbers of GPs allowed to treat heroin addicts. On the contrary, we encourage as many family doctors as possible to get involved in the Methadone Treatment Programme. There is now a quality assurance mechanism in place. [continues 151 words]
What with events in the Netherlands, and the plague of deaths in Ireland and Scotland, we seem - albeit inadvertently - to have come up with a solution to the drugs problem. On the one hand, we make it impossible for drugs users to tell the difference between heroin which will do the trick and heroin which will put them on a slab with a label around their toe; and on the other, we hand over control of the market to that notoriously fickle species, the drugs baron, who tends to go round bumping off his rivals. Pretty soon, we have lots of dead bodies, and no drugs problem; is that not right? [continues 816 words]
The Department of Education represents the weakest link in the multi-agency National Drugs Strategy chain and fails to participate in local drugs task forces, the Labour Party has claimed. In its submission to the Government's review of the National Drugs Strategy, the party declared its support for the strategy but stressed there were "major gaps" in the prevention, treatment and control of drug abuse. Ms Roisin Shortall TD, the Labour Party spokeswoman on education, described the Department as the "least effective actor" in the model. [continues 206 words]
Gardai expect there may be further violence arising from the weekend murder in Amsterdam of Derek Dunne, one of the Republic's leading heroin traffickers and son-in-law of the leading criminal, George "the Penguin" Mitchell. Mitchell's whereabouts were unknown yesterday but he is believed to have been in Amsterdam when Dunne, who was married to his daughter Rachel, was shot dead in an armed confrontation at his home in a quiet suburb in the west of the city. [continues 366 words]
Sir, - I am dismayed by the recent spate of heroin-related deaths because, more than anything else, the deaths have been caused by hypocrisy. We live in a society where the peddling of death through alcohol and tobacco are carefully regulated and highly taxed. However, vast sums of money are spent in this country, as well as in the rest of the world, on trying to eradicate the drugs trade. Has there been any success? The answer is an emphatic no. Not even death sentences have succeeded in even denting the volume or profitability of drug dealing. [continues 74 words]
It shouldn't have taken the arrival of a mysterious new illness to get those of us who work in the media to pay attention to the regular drumbeat of drug-related deaths that rolls beneath the daily movement of ordinary life in contemporary Ireland. Because news is supposed to be new, we often miss the terrible significance of things that have become numbingly familiar. To our shame, it took an element of novelty and mystery - the dangerous infection that has increased the rate of death among heroin-users - to bring into focus an awful obscenity that had become almost invisible. [continues 888 words]
Irish drug-dealers in the Netherlands are now encountering competition from a new wave of very violent organised criminals, mostly from eastern Europe, writes Jim Cusack The deaths of Irish nationals in drugs-related murders are beginning to figure among official Dutch government statistics. In the past two months four Irish men have been shot dead in the Netherlands, representing about 2 per cent of the annual rate of crime-related murders. The Dutch say the crime-related homicide rate is 1.2 per 100,000 of population, or about 190 per year. In this State last year there were 14 crime-related murders or 0.4 per 100,000. The Republic's low level of serious crime is shown in comparison with the US rate of around eight murders per 100,000. [continues 731 words]
