Minister should ask Irish people first if they agree with injection centres

Reports have emerged that Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Minister of State for Culture and Equality, is to announce to an academic conference in London he intends to introduce legislation to facilitate the establishment of taxpayer-funded, medically supervised, injection centres in Dublin and elsewhere for the convenience and comfort of drug addicts.

He is to also tell his English audience he wants Irish people to remove the stigma attaching to the ingestion of heroin, cocaine and cannabis, thereby regarding drug addiction as normal, safe, civilised and sociable behaviour.

The junior minister has not cited a scintilla of evidence, operating precedent, research or cost-benefit analysis to persuade the public his proposition has any merit or credibility. His suggestion about eliminating the stigma attaching to drug addiction would imply this can be achieved through political posturing, blended with myopic indifference by the public towards the threat of menace and criminality confronting them.

Last year, the Revenue Commissioners reported 6,158 illicit drug seizures with a street value of over €91m. The availability of cosy, State- sponsored, injection centres will undoubtedly boost this trend at considerable cost to taxpayers’ for policing and surveillance.

If there is a stigma, there is also an abundance of evidence available every day in our courts and in the emergency departments of the nations’ hospitals, where staff are always subject to assault, abuse and intimidation by drug addicts, that public fear is not misplaced.

Does the junior minister not accept there is a very high correlation between drug addiction and crime caused by the effect of drugs on thought and behaviour? The tens of millions of euro connected to drug addiction is frequently funded by the activities of heavily armed unscrupulous criminals. Does the junior minister not accept this will not change by the establishment of State-funded injection centre?

Recurring turf wars among criminal gangs connected to this illicit enterprise will not vanish because addicts’ use medically supervised injection centres. Businesses in the vicinity of such centres would likely suffer adverse consequences and diminished customer footfall.

Perhaps Mr Ó Ríordáin ought to have a thoughtful preliminary conversation with the Irish public in the first instance about his proposition before he presents it to an English audience as a fait accompli. Irish citizens may resent being treated as guinea pigs in a social science experiment that very few others across the globe have ventured to embrace.

Myles Duffy

Glenageary

Co Dublin