Generations of families caught in drugs cycle

PROJECT workers in a number of communities are encountering increased instances of drug and alcohol abuse spanning three generations of the same family, a conference has heard.

At the conference, organised by the Ballymun Youth Action Project (BYAP), the country’s longest-running community drugs project, its director Dermot King called on the Government to recognise the vital role played by community-based drugs projects.

Mr King said some communities in Ireland are caught in a vicious cycle of addiction with drug and alcohol problems passed down through generations of the same families.

He said project workers have witnessed an intergenerational pattern of drug misuse within some families in Ballymun, and that similar patterns are being reported in other communities

“In some cases, we are now treating the grandchildren of people who attended our service when it was established 30 years ago.

“This has far-reaching implications, not just for the individual families concerned, but for entire communities. Linked to an intergenerational cycle of drug misuse are problems such as increased incidences of criminal activity, physical degeneration of neighbourhoods, unemployment, poverty and ill-health. As such, even those families who avoid substance misuse can suffer as a result of high levels of drug use in their local area,” Mr King said.

Yesterday’s conference is part of a series of events to mark the BYAP’s 30th anniversary. BYAP was founded by local people in 1981 in response to the drug-related deaths of three young people in Ballymun.

According to Mr King, different trends in substance misuse have been evident over the lifetime of the project.

“When BYAP was founded the worst of the heroin epidemic had yet to arrive here, but other drugs and alcohol were taking away young lives, and our first priority was to help those affected and to educate our community about these drugs. Then heroin arrived and made things worse. That situation changed when methadone was introduced, but the problems didn’t just go away.

“Now heroin is less prevalent, but people are seeking help due to their use of prescription drugs or head-shop substances. In some cases, these people find it hard to acknowledge they have a problem because they do not view the substances they use as ‘hard-core’ drugs.”

Mr King said successive governments have quite rightly listened to the voices of academics and statutory agencies when planning their response to drugs-related problems.

“However, the Government must not ignore the very important voice of communities, who know what is needed on the ground to support those who misuse drugs and to prevent our young people from following in their footsteps.

“Research backs up the call for community voices to be put at the forefront of finding a solution: successive reports, going back as far as the Bradshaw Report in 1983, have called for communities to be consulted with fully and to be central to any proposed solutions. But, to date... we have had little more than cosmetic engagement with those of us on the ground delivering a community response.”