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THE TRAGIC CASE in Cork is a reminder of the failures in our approach to drugs in responding after-the-fact to emergencies instead of putting in place proactive measures to identify contaminates and high-purity drugs in the market.
People are posed with health risks when consuming illegal drugs by virtue of them being unregulated and policy should aim to reduce the harm.
82% of students have tried illegal drugs in their lifetime, according to the National Student Drug survey and so it affects people from all walks of life. Everyone could imagine at least one relative or friend that could be part of this 82%.
Promoting safety
We need a health system that provides for them and allows them to be safe. Drug testing facilities are available in the UK, Spain and Portugal as part of a health-based approach and they are saving lives.
As we dispell early speculation and rumours of the case in Cork, it’s important to repeat the facts of the case here. 25I-NBOMe was consumed at a party of young people in Cork on Monday night.
It’s important to remember that doses vary for different drugs. For example, there are 2,000 doses for one gram of 25I- NBOMe (one gram being about the size of a €2 coin). Without information on contents and dosing, there is no sure way for a person to know how much to take as well as what they are taking.
Drug-testing facilities reduce risk by providing lab reports for drug contents. When taken in a holistic approach to include education around dosing and harm reduction, this approach could save lives and prevent a situation like this from occurring in the future.
The issue can no longer be ignored. That is why we are holding an important conversation on drug-testing and harm reduction at our upcoming symposium next week in Dublin.
Political engagement in policy
However, some of our elected officials think the issue can be swept under the rug, thus undermining the importance of this debate. One politician responded to our invitation saying,
I cannot attend. I would think that lobbying for changes to legislation during an election period would be a waste of your time.
The fear of engaging with this topic during election time is not an adequate excuse and it shows how ineffective certain politicians are. The health and wellbeing of our citizens is not any less important at election time as any other time.
Our elected officials should never be afraid to discuss policies. It will be very clear who the honest politicians are going by who attends the symposium. It will be the brave politicians that engage with difficult topics that are worth voting for in this election.
The lesson we need to take from this is that health services need to take a proactive approach in providing information and safer guidelines to people as part of a drug testing programme. This could include having drugs tested with lab equipment at festivals and nightclubs with cooperation of the gardaí and festival organisers as trialled in Boom Festival in Portugal and the Manchester Warehouse Project.
Saving lives
In these cases, drugs and their contents are displayed on stage screens, by mobile app or online. Providing emergency warnings before a person consumes a drug could potentially save their life and protecting a person’s life should always the goal of policy.
Less emergencies would mean a reduction in the rate of ambulance call-outs and accident and emergency resources. By not actively collecting data of drug samples in the market, the job of emergency doctors is made more difficult.
In this case there was a 24-hour wait to have the drugs tested and it can take weeks to find out precise contents. Only by identifying contents before someone gets into difficulty will we be able to treat emergencies more effectively and prevent misuse of drugs in certain situations.
This more honest approach may also be a more effective way to educate people and it could allow more opportunities for people to seek help, ask questions and learn.
Perhaps the closest country to home is Wales with the WEDINOS project, which tests drug samples that are mailed into a government-funded laboratory. Josie Smith of Public Health Wales leads this project and says, “We are funded by the Welsh government with the recognition that people will experiment with a range of drugs because they are far more accessible than ever before”.
Wales has opted for a pragmatic approach to drugs and Ireland should of the same.
Now is an important time as ever to discuss drug policy and Josie Smith will be presenting the health-based approach in Wales at the upcoming symposium.
Graham de Barra is Director of Help Not Harm, a campaign supporting a shift of drugs from criminal justice to public health in order to improve access to harm reduction, education and treatment. The conference will be held on Thursday 28 January in Buswells Hotel, Dublin at 9am. If you are interested in attending the Help Not Harm Symposium, please email grahamdebarra@helpnotharm.org for further details.
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I can agree with the article but I don’t think having them sent to a lab for testing as per Wales, is going to make much difference. You go to your dealer on a Friday or Saturday, get the drugs, and consume them an hour or two later. That’s how it works for the vast majority of drug takers recreational or otherwise. Waiting to have then tested, while it may have some merit for the more cautious among us who may use such a service, will do nothing to counteract what happened in Cork. Drug taking tends to be quite spontaneous too.
15 years ago the Green party in the UK were selling home XTC testing kits for £20. I bought one myself at that time as I was taking XTC every weekend. Also at that time it was widely reported that certain nightclubs in Holland were using UV lights in their clubs for XTC users to test the purity there and then before consuming. It looked something like an ATM machine and you’d walk up and put the drug under the light. That’s progressive in itself.
When you have clowns like Micheal MArtin and Brian Cowen claiming they didn’t inhale you know where you stand on this issue. Inhaling or taking drugs is not illegal, having them in your possession is. The media seemed to have missed that bit at the time.
Even Gay Byrne at this point has called for the legalisation of drugs. Ming, while well-meaning, became a little off-putting to the older generation on this topic in my opinion. A little too dictatorial and he turned quite a lot of people off. The wrong people. The people in their 50′s, 60′s and beyond. They are the people that need to be convinced through reasoned argument and gently too.
I think this might be more for dealers than users. To make sure their stuff is okay. No dealer regardless of what the media says would want someone dying because of using their drugs nor the police attention it draws
You can still buy those test kits over the internet for about €30 euro and they can differentiate between most drugs! Not enough people know about them, and the hse issuing statements like “there is no way to know what is in your drugs” is just promoting unsafe use.
Richard if the drugs passed through one set of hands you’d have a point, but by the time they get to the consumer they’ve had a number of people add to the weight. And most of those dealing in chemicals have no morals whatsoever
Powders maybe. But you can’t add to pills. EVEn so if a dealer has let’s say 20 plus pills I reckon the vast majority would still cover their back and get one tested. Doesn’t guarantee they are all safe. It is all about harm reduction not elimination (which is impossible while unregulated)
What exactly do you think pills are before they become pills?
Certain drugs are bought in pill form, others in powder. They are usually turned into pills by the manufacturers in Asia or wherever. It is not in their interest to contaminate the product or add adulterants. 10% extra weight to them means very little when their wholesale price is a tiny fraction of what it sells for here in the west. They want repeat business. It is when drugs come to the west that weight gets added my adding other substances. When the price is 10 times more here than what was paid for it, that is when it is extremely profitable to add the weight. Big time dealers would test for the purity to make sure they are getting good stuff and then cut it up. Doesn’t really happen at the lower level.
@Richard.
If a bag of heroin results in an overdose then the dealer who supplied it is suddenly inundated with demand for that batch as users recognise t’s a strong dose.
It’s not uncommon for dealers to put a lethal dose in the mix somewhere to boost sales.
The decision as to who gets the lethal dose is left to the street dealers.
Blanket prohibition with no chance of debate ain’t cutting it either. It’ll never be out of people’s reach if they want it
Education and easily available drug testing kits is the only way. People are going to take drugs no matter what, they should at least know what they are getting into.
Those kits can’t detect all the ingredients so no good really.
I think some information is always better than no information, as long as the tester is aware of the limitations of a reagent test. For example, a lot of what is sold as MDMA contains no MDMA, and simple reagent tests can prove that. Having tests more prevalent and consumers more educated would make a big difference to what dealers can get away with selling.
Readily available reagent tests to have at home and available in places where people are likely to take drugs. This in conjunction with walk in centres that perform more rigorous testing during office hours and publish the results online would be a great step forward.
Of course, all of this is just to avoid doing the obvious, which would be regulating the production and supply of drugs, the same as we do with every other industry producing things that people put in their bodies.
Tragic??? Give the hysterical nonsense a rest already!
Bring this issue up when politicians are knocking on doors so they know that it is important
All our politicians should be encouraged to try a dose of LSD in a controlled environment.
Judging by the bull s hite they come out with I reckon most of them are trippin’ already. I remember a few years ago there was a lot of talk about a “rainbow” government… Far out maaan.
Stuff like this won’t happen if it was legal and regulated.
All that 25i nBome stuff are just horrible research chemicals that you can easily buy off online vendors
Once the Govt makes them illegal all they have to do is change one or two molecules and boom it’s legal again, and the humans who consume them are essentially the guinea pigs.
Same with that poor girl taking PMA instead of MDMA at the Twisted Pepper awhile ago.
This is just going to keep on happening again and again until the people in power use some common sense and legalise them, while also providing education on how to take them responsibly.
Humans should be allowed to explore their consciousness, just like our ancestors before us did.
The problem with 25-i-nbome is it’s very active at 100 micrograms, much like LSD. The difference is 200 micrograms of LSD might frighten you, but 200 micrograms of 25-i-nbome could land you in deep doody. It could even conceivably happen that some clown orders the stuff online in bulk, which would only be a gram. Some people dont know or understand this and the concept of dosage curve. People re-dose repeatedly with the common street drugs, and there’s usually not a problem. Some of the more obscure substances have a dangerously steep dose curve, unlike street drugs. These substances are dangerous in the hands of those who dont, or wont research them properly. At the same time, handled properly, & there’s likely not to be a problem. This is the case most of the time thankfully.
It’s worth noting that id certain well known substances were not outlawed, but regulated, these obscure chems would be very very rare.
If I was to offer advice on it … I’d tell people not to use synthetic versions of drugs. At least you know the risk associated with traditional drugs. Synthetics are the new heroin…. they will cause massive social damage in the next 10 years. Maybe Philip K Dick’s vision of the future isn’t far off the mark.. a society hooked on VR & synthetic drugs. We lose our perception of reality.
Well don’t be knockin VR, it’s pretty darn cool.
People taking research chems and eating eachother is another matter entirely
Dumbest statement I have ever heard.
Drugs have been around as long as we have. People do stupid shit regardless.
Do you really think virtual reality technology would be less of a danger to humans than a
psychotropic drug..?
mandatory 20 years for dealing.
Still drugs coming into places like Indonesia where the death penalty applies.
Draconian laws are only taking more steps backwards, and so long as we’re saying weed is more harmful than alcohol we have a moral duty to oppose the status quo
Two death penalties then.
The more severe the penalties for drug smuggling the greater the rewards if your successful and for drug mules who are normally doing it because they’re desperate for cash the greater the draw. Thailand has some of the harshest laws on the planet is awash with drugs. Magic mushrooms and weed are common pizza toppings for crying out loud and yabba can be bought on most street corners for pennies.China white is pretty much everywhere and regularly sold to idiot tourists as cocaine leading to Pulp Fiction scenarios.Then you have the likes of Saudi Arabia who make a big hoohaa about executing smugglers but where only recently one of it’s princes was caught with two tonnes of speed.. Enough to get every man, woman and child in the Middle East of their faces for the next 30 years. The myth that harsher penalties for smuggling or possession discourage drug use is hogwash.
oh dear. here comes the authoritarian clowns.
A “say no to drugs” message hasn’t worked but surely the USI were irresponsible by not asking young people to avoid this stuff. The HSE came out and said it. This needs to be tackled from a health perspective NOT a legal criminal one. People take the stuff regardless of legality and regulation. We need to have a similar campaign like the tobacco one – disincentivise the stuff and highlight all the dangers that are there.
People are playing Russian roulette with substances they at least should be aware of the bullets in the gun.
They really aren’t playing Russian roulette because if they were the deaths and incidents would be much higher. There are risks but exaggerated them undermines anything else said.
Time for an open grown up discussion.
Never forget the first substance most people abuse is alcohol.
If they think their lives are so miserable and worthless that they feel the need to take drugs and get high, let them, who cares!! They are probably at it every weekend! Any drug user or junkie knows the consequences of taking drugs and a possibility of an overdose. They are clearly okay with it, leave them to it if they want to kill themselves. The problem is that they are so out of it that they can hurt or kill/attack other people. Why even publish this crap about these junkies?!
NEWSFLASH RONAN: In Ireland, just over 27% reported using any illegal drugs in their lifetime. Cannabis was the most commonly used illegal drug with 25% of the adult population having ever used the drug. After cannabis, lifetime use was highest for ecstasy, cocaine and magic mushrooms (each 7%) – This story impacts more than a few people…. try 1 million
Your definitive statements remind me of primary school lessons when our teacher explained that words like ‘any’ or ‘none’ are inapplicable to society at large. Did you skip primary school Ronan? Any drug user, they are clearly okay, they are so out of it….you are generalizing and it shows your ignorance.
If they think their lives are so miserable and worthless that they feel the need to take drugs and get high, let them, who cares!! They are probably at it every weekend! Any drug user or junkie knows the consequences of taking drugs and a possibility of an overdose. They are clearly okay with it, leave them to it if they want to kill themselves. The problem is that they are so out of it that they can hurt or kill/attack other people. Why even publish this crap about drug users, is it news?!
A house party on Monday night? Respect!!! In my day the trippin’ was kept for the weekend… “Avoid the brown acid maaaan”…
The government has hiked up the price of smoking so it’s not an option, the price of alcohol is ridiculous and leo has proposed another hike with min price on wine to €9 and all others €1 a unit. Weed now legal in some states in US, will never be legal here so what’s a student to do? It’s foolish to think people won’t want to to have a social life and enjoy themselves and with the current gov I can understand why this is what they turn to. The gov has so much blood on their hands now, between this, the unsafe hospitals, and the increase in suicide to to financial sanctions imposed.
Is a criminal case opened in relation to this….it should be. Kids putting this stuff in their mouth’s…dancing in the nude covered in blood, chewing the edge of a pavement, in a different world…mad stuff.
How about the hse take into account that normal drug test dont test for these designer drugs. So addicts keep on using away and getting away with violence and drug driving and doin untold damage to others. Ignoring the problem doesn’t help the victims of these drugs.
People who take trips, Es and party pill type stuff aren’t addicts or violent.
That’s a whole different thing.
Alcohol & prescription meds cause way more violence and crime than party drugs. Massively.
love the thumbs down for what is clearly for someone, an uncomfortable truth.
People like to get high, and most never have a problem. Thats never gonna change, and there’ll never be an honest debate until certain people accept it.. Put that in your puritan pipe and smoke it!
If u are stupid enough to do drugs this day in age then shame on u we all know the repocussions
While we’re waiting forever for the government to grow the balls to do something, if you’re a person who uses recreational drugs you can seriously diminish your chances of something going wrong by buying these testing kits online:
https://dancesafe.org/product/complete-set-of-all-7-testing-kits/
Costs about €90, which I know is steep but they last about a year. Think about the price you’d pay if something goes wrong, and make the smart choice. The full kit can test for pretty much every drug available. Worth noting though that although the test will tell ya what the ‘majority’ substance is in your drug, it won’t tell ya if it’s purely that substance alone. In other words, you’ll pretty much eliminate your chances of dying from a dodgy batch, but that shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to overindulge, cos there could be traces of god knows what in there.
have your say