Drugs and Ireland - Government response is shameful

THERE ARE few tragedies that so graphically, so starkly, so very everyday and heartbreaking, that illustrate our society’s catalogue of despair and failure than our growing drugs crisis.

Most of our failures, our indifference to our fellow man, our greed, our cold-heartedness and weaknesses, and our nihilism can be seen at this sorry and increasingly crowded crossroads.

It is where we are seen most savagely for what we have become: an economy to be exploited rather than a society on which its weakest members can rely.

Most frighteningly, every expert in the field and international trends anticipate that the situation will only deteriorate.

As frighteningly, our criminally incompetent government has shown at nearly every opportunity that organising a meaningful response, let alone a solution, seems to be utterly beyond them.

Any government that presides over a prison system awash with drugs has abdicated its moral and practical authority on the crisis. By allowing a situation where an individual can develop or deepen an addiction while in prison the government has shown that it has neither the compassion nor the steel needed to deal with the problem.

Another scandal presided over by Taoiseach Ahern’s decade-old government is its shameful failure to provide any meaningful opportunities for redemption.

We have all heard the dreadful stories of people — brothers and sisters, sons and daughters at their lowest ebb — trying to get a place on some programme to confront their addiction, but being told that they will have to join a queue.

Remember, these are people trying to reclaim their shattered lives, people trying to end their day-to-day nightmare of dependency and subjugation, trying to again become functioning, loving members of a family.

And in this time of unprecedented wealth Bertie Ahern’s government-in-perpetuity’s response is represented by the 20 detox beds in Dublin, where there are an estimated 13,000 drug addicts — and that does not even consider the tens of thousands of alcohol-related problems in our capital.

There may yet be a crumb of comfort from official sources as Fianna Fáil deputy for Dublin North West Pat Carey was appointed Minister of State with special responsibility for drugs strategy and community affairs at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, last June.

While Deputy Carey is to be offered every best wish in his task, he has a mountain to climb in terms of perception and achievement. Let us hope that the objectives set out when he was appointed are at least in part realised.

Only time will tell, though whether a health system that advances the profit-and-loss principles of co-location has the human empathy needed to confront the dreadful issues at play here is questionable.

Increasing quantities of drugs are being smuggled into the country each year — there were 32 kgs of cocaine smuggled into the country in 2002, that figure increased sixfold in 2006 to 190kgs.

The frequency of gangland killings — all but unknown in Ireland a decade ago — has increased, as has the intensity of the violence used to try to control the drug trade. This violence has spilled over into the greater community, with at least two people being murdered in recent times just as they were caught up in a drug-war crossfire.

Gardaí are under-resourced, and despite several high-profile successes it would be naive to imagine that they are any more successful than their foreign colleagues. It is internationally accepted that the drugs seized by security forces represent only about 10% of the drugs in circulation.

Of course the engine driving all of this mayhem is money and the greed that it engenders. Drug dealers have all too often shown the lengths they are prepared to go to protect their interests.

Drug dealers are not the only group prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect their business. Just a few weeks ago we had the dreadful example of pharmacists in Dublin briefly abandoning a methadone programme for drug addicts, using their customers’ vulnerability as leverage in a dispute with the HSE.

In the face of all of this tragedy it is amazing that there is such a lack of effective educational programmes in our schools. The National Youth Council has already admitted that its policy is too alcohol-focused and that it will have to widen its perspective.

After all it cannot be too difficult to educate the majority of young people not to indulge in behaviour that has the potential to kill them, and even if it does not, has the potential to profoundly affect their relationships and lives.

While our government must accept criticism on many fronts there is one aspect on which it has no case to answer. Each one of us — not government — is responsible for our actions and the consequences of those actions. In this context we must be aware of the potential for disaster we invite into our own lives, and the lives of those around us, when we begin to use drugs.

The scorecard for this deadly game is kept in the coroners’ courts of Ireland, and if you still believe you can use drugs and stay above the mayhem caused by addiction read pages eight and nine of today’s supplement with great care — learn the lesson, say ‘no.’