Jonathan O’Brien backs legalisation of drugs in injection centre

A drug injection centre must be set up in Cork and users be allowed to bring drugs to the facility in a bid to stem the tide of addiction in the city, says a Sinn Féin TD.

Jonathan O’Brien has rowed in behind Labour Drugs Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin’s plan to tackle Ireland’s drugs crisis, saying that, despite public fears over the move, “the alternative to this is people are going to continue to die on our streets”.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner in his first in-depth interview about his brother Martin’s drug addiction, and how he returned to rehab over Christmas after his latest attempt to go clean and find a home, the Cork North Central TD warned that unless something radical is done now, a generation could be lost. He said he would welcome the opening of a drug injection centre in his own constituency, and that legalising the possession of some drugs on the sites would be a “natural knock-on consequence”.