HAVE YOU EVER walked through Dublin or another city in Ireland only to see drug users openly injecting on the streets?
The director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project, Tony Duffin, said it is not an uncommon sight:
“I would say every alley way in Dublin is used for public injecting at some point during the week – it really is that serious.”
But what’s the solution?
Duffin said it’s time Ireland looked at the positive results in other countries with opened medically-supervised injecting centres.
Dropping in to TheJournal.ie’s offices to take part in a livestream interview this afternoon in our semi-regular ‘ask the expert’ slot, a lot of drug-related issues were discussed:
For instance, we talked to Duffin about:
Open drug injecting
Open drug injecting or needles disposed of in alleyways is something Duffin said would not be surprising to see in the city centre.
“If anyone uses the city, for any reason, whether they live, work or visit the city, it wouldn’t take much time to realise that Dublin has a very significant public injecting problem.”
All the stakeholders, the businesses, no body is happy about the situation…
Duffin said this isn’t a problem we can really solve, but said it is a problem that has to be managed.
Injecting centre services are used in 90 areas around the globe – and Ireland should be the next, he said.
Having visited a centre in Kings Cross in Sydney, he said the service has reduced the problem in the area and he found no public injecting in the surrounding locality.
Cuts to services
“It has been evaluated by nine different third parties and is working very well. We would like to do the same here.”
Duffin said that in the last five or six years, voluntary drugs services has been cut by up to 37%.
“Dublin, in particular, has a very significant problem with drugs.”
On a political level, there needs to be a willingness to invest on treatment and rehabilitation, he said.
“This is health issue, not a policing issue.”
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