Doctors will be allowed to prescribe medicinal cannabis under regulations likely to be introduced this year. It is also to become an offence to possess certain prescription drugs without authorisation. This is in an effort to address the spiralling problem of open dealing in benzodiazepines and other tranquilliser drugs. Minister of State for Primary Care Alex White has issued consultation documents on his plans and is seeking submissions by the end of the month. However, the proposals are likely to be welcomed by interested parties who have been seeking such changes for a number of years. They would also bring Ireland into line with other EU states and into compliance with obligations under a number of UN resolutions. [continues 118 words]
The Government looked at legalising heroin in 2001, a former junior minister has claimed. Eoin Ryan MEP told The Irish Times that he and Government officials visited Holland and Switzerland between 2001 and 2002 where heroin is dispensed to addicts for self-injection in designated clinics. Mr Ryan was minister of state with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy from 2000 to 2002. "We looked at it to see how the heroin issue was being dealt with in Europe but in the event we came to the conclusion that legalisation was a very drastic step." He said that those addicts who were being prescribed heroin ended up using it for the rest of their lives. "The medical advice was that it was more realistic to get people off methadone." [continues 450 words]
Three heroin addicts have been admitted to Dublin hospitals with symptoms of the "flesh-eating" disease which has also emerged among drug-users in Glasgow. The illness is not, however, the same as one that killed 40 drug-users here and in Britain last year. Ms Elaine McKean, spokeswoman for the Greater Glasgow Health Board, confirmed that the outbreak was not caused by the Clostridium Novyi bacterium identified among intravenous drug-users last year. "It is quite different but still very serious, serious enough that we have issued this warning even before we are certain that a widespread problem exists." She said the cause may not be contaminated heroin but dirty needles or syringes and added that "investigations are ongoing". [continues 300 words]
General practitioners who dispense methadone to heroin addicts are threatening not to cooperate with the new drugs courts, because of their pay and working conditions. The drugs courts, which would offer rehabilitation instead of prison to drug addicts who are convicted of criminal offences, are scheduled to begin operation on January 9th. Some 89 per cent of heroin addicts on methadone maintenance programmes in the Eastern Regional Health Authority region are treated by GPs. According to Dr Cathal O'Sullivan, spokesman for GPs Specialising in Substance Abuse (GPSSA), these GPs are working "with no contracts, minimum legal entitlements in relation to holiday and sick leave, no study leave, no contribution to medical indemnity and no provision for pensions". [continues 183 words]
Improved and increased cooperation between the business and the voluntary sectors could transform the drug-users of today into the taxpayers of tomorrow, a European-funded project has concluded. The final report from the Integra project, "From Residential Treatment to Employment", was published at the Merchants' Quay Project in Dublin yesterday. Merchants' Quay is the largest voluntary drug treatment centre in the State. The two-year project was initiated as a result of a gap in drug treatment services identified by Merchants' Quay. It aimed to develop a programme which would minimise the risk of recovering addicts relapsing. [continues 154 words]
A number of children at a special school for young offenders have been repeatedly found under the influence of cannabis, the Department of Education has confirmed. Staff at Trinity House special school in Lusk, Co Dublin, have found several residents "stoned" on cannabis on a number of occasions in the past month, a Department of Education spokesman said. "The school has encountered the intermittent use of cannabis during the past few weeks but the problem has been addressed," he said. "All parents who have children at the school have been informed and the children that were involved in bringing the drugs into the school have been confronted. Their privileges have been taken away from them." [continues 240 words]
The Irish Medicines Board has declined to comment on new research indicating the herb St John's Wort, popular as a remedy for depression, is as effective as conventional drugs and has fewer side effects. A report published in today's British Medical Journal says doctors should prescribe the herb as a "first choice" treatment for patients with mild to moderate depression. On the IMB's recommendation, the Minister for Health banned over the counter sales of St John's Wort from January 1st last, citing concerns about potential side effects. [continues 310 words]
Police in Birmingham are to investigate a possible link between heroin-related deaths in the city and recent similar deaths in the Republic and in Scotland. Two young drug-users have died within 24 hours in the city and a third is critically ill. Two new cases affecting two women were also confirmed by the Greater Glasgow Health Authority yesterday. One of them died in hospital in Glasgow early yesterday. West Midlands police have warned drug users in the Birmingham area about the possibility of a "poor-quality batch of heroin in circulation". The Birmingham health service has also put its casualty departments on alert for drug users with unusual symptoms. [continues 405 words]
The number of drug-users presenting at one of Dublin's largest drug-treatment centres increased by almost a third last year, as compared with 1998, according to a report to be published today. The Merchant's Quay Project annual report also reports an increase in the number of young drug-users sleeping rough and the number of new young injectors. The open access service at the project saw a 28 per cent increase in client visits - a total of 33,090 visits, or 138 per day - last year. [continues 270 words]
Government policies on reducing the demand for drugs have not failed and future policies will embrace a wider range of treatment options, the chairman of the National Drugs Strategy Review has said. The Minister of State, Mr Eoin Ryan, was reacting to the annual report from the State's largest voluntary drug treatment centre. Published yesterday, the Merchant's Quay report says there was a 28 per cent rise in the number of new drug addicts presenting for treatment. It saw 650 new clients in 1999. [continues 306 words]
Homelessness, a hostile treatment programme and prostitution all make recovery from heroin addiction even harder than it already is. Members of a new lobby group for former drug users talk to Kitty Holland "Asking an addict what his opinion was about treatment - about anything in fact - would be like a dog asking the fleas on his back what they thought of fur. That might sound a bit rough, but that's the truth of it," says Tommy Larkin. "That's what most addicts believe the world thinks of them, so most wouldn't think there was any point in even trying to have a voice. Who'd listen to fleas?" [continues 1526 words]
The rescinding of the Public Order Act to allow anti-drugs marches and reform of the Garda Complaints Board are among the measures recommended in a policy document from one of the State's largest anti-drugs organisations. "Facing The Future: Policy 2000", published by the Coalition Of Communities Against Drugs (COCAD), was launched in Dublin last night by Minister of State Mr Eoin Ryan, who is chairman of the National Drugs Strategy. Founded in 1996, COCAD is an umbrella organisation of community-based, anti-drugs groups. [continues 264 words]
Drug treatment centred on methadone maintenance was "social control and then abandonment", an addiction lecturer told yesterday's conference. Ms Jane Wilson, researcher in addiction and mental health at the University of Stirling in Scotland, said health professionals working with drug addicts should be sensitive to the likelihood of a background of childhood trauma and psychological problems. Returning a detoxified addict to the environment in which they formed their addiction, without recognising that they would need support and possibly psychological treatment, was a recipe for the "revolving-door" syndrome, she said, where the addict might relapse over and over again. [continues 253 words]
The answer to the medical mystery behind the rash of deaths among heroin users here and in Britain would appear to have come in Cardiff yesterday. A team lead by Prof Brian Duerden at the Public Health Laboratory Service unit (PHLS) in the Welsh capital identified the bug that has killed heroin users in Britain as clostridium novaea, a member of the clostridium family. Clostridium is an anaerobic bacterium, meaning it flourishes in the absence of oxygen. It can exist, however, in a kind of "suspended animation" as spores in dust or soil. If heroin is cut with soil or dust containing the bacterium, once injected into the oxygen-free environment of body muscle, it can multiply and produce potentially fatal toxins which attack the body. However, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Regional Health Authority here said its department of public health was still trying to establish the cause of the illness here. [continues 348 words]
"I was burning up like a furnace, down on all fours like I was going to collapse. With heroin you can get pins and needles that last about 10 seconds, but this lasted about 20 minutes. Oh, I was freaked out." Mr Alan Carass (43) was recalling the evening three weeks ago when he and his best friend, Paddy Kane, injected some of the contaminated heroin. Both homeless, the men were "partners", said Alan, who shared everything - money, food, heroin. The heroin they shared near the canal at Baggot Street killed Paddy and put Alan in hospital for three weeks. [continues 179 words]
Starting in Cork yesterday, the Government has embarked on a series of meetings throughout the State to hear what people think should be done about drugs. Kitty Holland sets the scene Serious drug abuse has spread beyond Dublin, with cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis abuse in particular having doubled in some areas between 1997 and 1998. And no one is in any doubt that drug-users are getting younger, and using for longer. Waiting lists for methadone maintenance remain, more than three years after a ministerial task force recommended a target "to eliminate all waiting lists [for methadone maintenance centres in Dublin] during 1997". [continues 869 words]
A bacterium called clostridium was the most likely cause of the deaths of eight heroin users in the State, the head of the investigation into similar deaths in Glasgow said yesterday. Dr Laurence Gruer, consultant in public health medicine with the Greater Glasgow Health Authority, said: "Everything points to it [the cause of the infections] being one of the clostridium family." However, the process of isolating the bacterium behind the illness could take several weeks. Dr Joe Barry, consultant in public health medicine with the Eastern Regional Health Authority, said it was difficult to know whether clostridium was the cause, though he confirmed it was one of the "theories". [continues 457 words]
The heroin behind the deaths of at least eight addicts in Ireland and 14 in Scotland may have come through Liverpool, sources in the Greater Glasgow Health Authority said last night. "One of the possibilities being looked at, I understand, is that the drug came into Liverpool and then some came up to Glasgow and Aberdeen, and more then went across to Dublin," said a senior official involved in the investigation into 12 heroin-related deaths in Glasgow and two in Aberdeen. [continues 191 words]
The seven recent deaths of heroin users from unidentified causes is not deterring people from using the drug, counsellors in Dublin have said. They are "just waiting for another death" as a result of the unidentified cause, they added. Meanwhile, some 70 drug users came forward for assessment in the Eastern Regional Health Authority area in the past few days, a spokeswomen has confirmed. They anticipated a significant increase in this figure in the coming week, she added. Mr Tony Geoghegan, of the Merchant's Quay Project, said the recent deaths were not making any difference to the numbers taking the drug. [continues 449 words]
Younger heroin addicts are more likely to take risks with drugs, while women are more likely both to take risks and engage in risky sexual behaviour than their older and male counterparts, the report also found. Of the 1,137 clients surveyed by the Merchant's Quay needle exchange programme for its evaluation report, Making Contact, those who reported sharing needles were on average 22.4 years of age, compared with non-borrowing addicts who were on average 24 years. The report also found that "female clients were significantly more likely to report sharing injecting equipment with their sexual partner" than were the men. Some 37 per cent of women said they shared IV equipment compared with 13 per cent of the men. Women (63 per cent) were also more likely to share injecting paraphernalia such as spoons and filters than men (53 per cent). [continues 97 words]
