Govt's drugs strategy 'inadequate'

The Government has shown a lack of commitment to tackling the country’s drugs crisis, a leading activist claimed today.

Blaming bureaucratic wrangling and a lack of funding, the former community representative on the National Drugs Strategy Team Fergus McCabe said fresh impetus was needed to fight drugs.

Mr McCabe had spent the last eight years working with health chiefs and the Government in the battle against heroin, cocaine and drug abuse in towns and cities across the country.

But he has dramatically resigned.

Calling for a radical overhaul of funding, Mr McCabe said the €23m earmarked for anti-drugs schemes for 2006 was inadequate.

“What’s happening and the reason why I am resigning is because I know that over the last couple of years that that initial burst of enthusiasm, the initial burst of concern has begun to waiver,” he said.

“We have got to re-energise this process. We need a real process that delivers real things.”

Addressing more than 100 community activists, volunteers and politicians in Dublin, Mr McCabe said the NDST had been complacent.

Noel Ahern, Minster of State with responsibility for drugs, said he was quite satisfied the strategy was working well.

“There’s always more you can do, there’s always new issues, there’s always new challenges and we are working on those but we should not underestimate the fact that there is now 600 people working out there on the prevention side and the treatment side,” the minister told RTE Radio.

Mr McCabe said resources and plans needed to be put in place for treatment centres to help those suffering from cocaine abuse.

And he said it was a shame the good approach of previous years was now unravelling.

“We moved from having a drugs strategy that was characterised by a lack of policy and structures and lack of support in communities to one that despite its faults was welcomed across the board,” he said.

He said the Government had moved from a position where 95% of local drugs task forces were funded to only allocating 1 million euro to support the Emerging Needs Funds – designed to run alongside task force projects.

“They don’t have the philosophical approach that we should build knowledge from the bottom, from the people who know the people who have suffered,” he said.

Mr McCabe claimed that when the Health Service Executive initially took over from the country’s various health boards it was slow to appoint a representative to the National Drugs Strategy Team.

He said the attitude to the drugs problem ravaging towns and cities across the country was luke-warm.

“You can’t have that in the middle of a drugs crisis that is continuing. If people sign up they have to be committed,” he said.