War on drugs failing on Leeside
“The war on drugs hasn’t reduced the availability of drugs. Drugs are more widespread today then they have been at any other point in Irish society.”
Those were the words of a Narcotics Anonymous (NA) Cork member, known as Martin, speaking two weeks after Sinn Féin TD Jonathan O’Brien called upon the Government to “hit dealers hard” in order to stem Cork’s growing heroin crisis.
According to Martin, the reasons people turn to drugs are “as multiple as the people who take them” and that treatment and attending meetings is the key to battling the problem.
He said: “People who want to escape reality tend to have good reason to do so. Heroin is not a fun drug. It relieves pain. It blots out all feeling. Homelessness, bleak prospects, broken homes, domestic violence, childhood abuse; these things often go hand in hand with addiction.”
Speaking to the Cork Independent, Deputy O’Brien said, that although treatment for addiction was crucial in the fight against drugs, suppliers of drugs should not be given a “free pass”.
Deputy O’Brien said: “The first thing we need to do is to stop treating addiction as a criminal justice issue. This is a health issue. We are talking about people who are addicts. You need to deal with the reasons behind the addiction, which are wide and varied.
“But there are people out there who are peddling misery and exploiting vulnerable people,” he said.
Deputy O’Brien added that Ireland could benefit from looking at other countries’ approaches to drugs and addiction, such as Portugal.
He said: “Portugal has a model where you don’t see people dying from class A drugs like heroin. They have injection centres, and I know that’s a very controversial issue for Irish communities, but they need to realise that drug use is happening either way.
“You’re getting needles in playgrounds. You have kids finding packets of heroin. This problem is not going away unless we deal with it.”
Narcotics Anonymous, an entirely self-funded organisation, has had a presence in Cork for more than 25 years with meetings happening throughout the region every day of the year.
The meetings encourage people who are struggling with addiction to come forward, share their stories and begin a 12 step programme of recovery.
John, a member of NA Cork and former heroin addict, has been clean for five and a half years and says that attending meetings has helped him through some hard times.
“Other people saw that I had a problem before I did. I would have been in denial about my problem. A friend of mine, who is actually dead now, brought me to my first meeting and I thought, ‘this isn’t for me at all’ and I left.
“I just couldn’t see how a load of people sitting in a circle talking about their feelings was going to keep me from using drugs,” he told the Cork Independent.
In 2014 John was facing jail for drugs possession and entered treatment again, where he remained for six months.
“I got back to Cork at six o’clock on a Wednesday and there was an NA meeting in Churchfield at half six. I went to the meeting and have kept going since.
“People see my worth now and I see my own worth. I have a relationship, I have a car, a job, I pay taxes, I went back to college. It’s about finding a new way to live,” he concluded.