Services needed to break young user cycle

TEENAGERS are dying and families are being torn apart due to a lack of services for adolescent drug addicts, campaigners have claimed.

A shortage of detox facilities for teenagers, a lack of mental health beds, no proper aftercare for teen drug users when they come out of treatment along with limited accommodation facilities for recovering addicts are combining to create a crisis within Ireland’s adolescent population.

While services for teenage addicts improved in recent years, much of a 2005 government-sponsored report on the problem remains to be implemented.