Irish Examiner view: Care rather than criminalisation

With people dying on our streets of overdoses through unsupervised injecting of drugs such as heroin, the introduction of medically supervised injection facilities, seems a natural, cost-effective way of treating the problem. Picture: iStock 

Ireland’s historical stance on drug abuse and addiction has generally mirrored that of the rest of the western world. That means we have criminalised and penalised a section of our community which has fallen into the grip of drugs, instead of trying to enlighten, embrace, and decriminalise thousands of victims.

In our modern society, drug use has become as habitualised and commonplace as our penchant for alcohol, but we have a lot still to learn about how to cope with the problems created by abuse of these substances.