Death of Alex Ryan ‘a wake-up’ call for politicians

Sinn Féin drugs spokesman Jonathan O’Brien is seeking to reverse the party’s opposition to the decriminalisation of drug use at its ard fheis in April.

Meanwhile, Labour drugs strategy minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said the adoption of the Portuguese decriminalisation model will be part of Labour’s election manifesto.

Mr Ó Ríordáin said his brief as junior minister, which also includes new communities, culture, and equality, was too wide and there needed to be a dedicated drugs minister with a “much bigger budget”.

Mr O’Brien said the death of 18-year-old Alex Ryan was “a bit of a wake-up call” for politicians, who are often focused on the mainstream drugs and “take their eye off the ball” in relation to the new psychoactive substances, such as 25I-NBOMe, involved in the student’s death.

Both politicians were at the inaugural conference of drug reform body Help Not Harm. Mr O’Brien said “politicians need to recognise” criminalisation of drug use had not worked.

“My own party is opposed to decriminalisation,” he told the conference. “Since I’ve been appointed drugs spokesperson, I am drafting a new drugs policy, which I will be presenting to the ard fheis in April and I’m strongly pushing... that the party changes its stance.”

Mr O’Brien said that criminalisation meant that people were often afraid to ring the emergency services in overdose situations.

He said he had first-hand experience of this through his brother, Martin, who has a heroin addiction.

“I have received phone calls in the early hours to say he’s overdosed and that I need to come and bring him to the emergency department,” said Mr O’Brien. :The reason people do that is they’re afraid to call the authorities.

“We’ve had deaths in Cork, where people have been at parties, where street drugs and heroin were used and people overdosed and they’ve been left in the house.”

“You can either address it from a public health point of view or keep criminalising people and, if you keep criminalising, people will keep on having incidents like we had in Cork.”

However, Mr Ó Ríordáin said that decriminalisation could not be at the expense of greater investment in treatment and in the “paltry state” of recovery services.

He said the Labour Party manifesto would “pursue the Portuguese model”.

Fr Peter McVerry expressed this fear at the conference, saying Portugal had also invested heavily in drug services.

www.helpnotharm.org