Call for dedicated drugs minister

The Government has its “head stuck in the sand” in relation to drugs and needs to appoint a dedicated junior minister to drive responses, including new laws on legal tranquillisers, Sinn Féin TD for Cork City, Jonathan O’Brien, has said.

He said the Government does not “see the urgency” in bringing in long-awaited regulations to control the sale and possession of tranquillisers such as benzodiazepines, and z-drugs, which are sleeping tablets. The call comes as figures show the number of people seeking treatment for benzodiazepines as their main drug of abuse jumped from 261 in 2009 to 719 in 2013 (up 175%).

Benzodiazepines were involved in 123 overdose deaths, or 35% of all poisonings, in 2012. Z-drugs, which are hypnotics, were implicated in a further 27 deaths.