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the DRUGS debate
DUBLIN COMMUNITIES ORGANISE
The heroin epidemic in Dublin is causing major
problems for addicts and for the communities where
they live. Oddly enough you would not get any
inkling of this crisis from the bourgeois press. That is
because the epidemic and its effects are confined to the
inner city and the working class suburbs like Ballymun,
Tallaght, Clondalkin and Blanchardstown. The
politicians and the powers that be don't give a damn
about the people who live in these communities or
about the problems they face. So, starting last summer,
these communities began to organise their own
response to the drugs crisis.
ICON, the Inner City Organisations Network, based on
the northside, took an initiative. It started a series of
meetings, open to the community, in the North Star
Hotel to discuss ways to tackle the problem. These
meetings were well attended by local people who talked
about their experiences with sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters and partners who are addicts and
who can't get on to the treatment programmes because
the waiting lists are so long.
There are now upwards of five hundred addicts waiting
to get on methadone treatment programmes in Dublin.
Some of these are in their early teens. Some are very
sick with the HIV virus and even Aids. Yet the main
response of the government announced in the summer
was a law and order one concentrated on security and
policing. These kinds of responses have been tried in
practically every country experiencing the same drugs
crisis without success.
ICON soon saw the need to spread out the campaign to
other communities. A series of city wide meetings
were held in Liberty Hall which were attended by
people from the Liberties, Blanchardstown, Tallaght,
Ballymun and other areas. A series of demands were
drawn up and sub-groups set up to deal with the
different aspects of the problem. A big increase in the
availability of treatment for addicts both in locally based
clinics, under community control, and from local G.Ps
are central demands.
Other issues are the lack of methadone maintenance
programmes in the prisons, the lack of success by the
police in catching the big dealers, and the desperate
social and economic conditions in the communities
which cause the drug addiction in the first place.
Unlike the community response in the 1980s, there has
been little enthusiasm for a return to the tactics of the
Concerned Parents Against Drugs. CPAD had taken a
direct action approach to dealers and those suspected of
dealing, and forced them out of the communities.
Although some people within the campaign do still
favour this approach, most don't because of the totally
changed situation on the ground now. Now most
families involved in the campaign have a close relative
who is an addict, they may even have a close relative
who has died at a young age from a drug related illness.
Many addicts are also small time dealers in order to
support their habit.
The drug problem is so closely intertwined with the
fabric of the community now ,especially in the inner
city areas, that it is no longer possible or desirable to
adopt the tactics of CPAD because people would be
targeting members of their own families. Another
reason is that there is now a clearer realisation that
there is nothing to be gained by just pushing the
problem and the addicts from one area to another.
There are other issues to be tackled too, such as the fact
that methadone itself is highly addictive and some
experts argue that it is better to prescribe heroin. The
whole issue of legalisation and decriminalisation of
hard and soft drugs is also up for debate. Resistance
from communities to drug treatment clinics in their
areas also has to be tackled head on. On the other hand
there are examples from Tallaght of working class
communities getting together to set up their own
treatment programmes with the support of one or two
G.Ps when the Eastern Health Board refused to deal
with the problem.
The reluctance of G.Ps to treat addicts is basically a
financial one. If the Dept. of Health would agree to pay
them more to treat addicts, many more would willingly
do so. Strangely enough this is exactly the same line of
argument they use about treating Travellers!
The state is not putting in the resources to tackle the
problem in any effective way. Their response is
primarily a policing one. As long as the heroin
problem stays in the working class communities -
where it creates havoc with people lives - the state will
not bother to respond in a serious manner unless it is
forced to do so. This is what the ICON led campaign
has been set up to do. It has the direct support and
involvement of local people from working class
communities and is democratically run. It remains to
be seen if it can be effective against the indifference and
self-interest of the ruling class.
Patricia McCarthy
"Direct Action Against Drugs"
Murder and Thuggery
MEN SHOT DEAD, many more beaten up. Attacks in
Armagh, Belfast, Derry, Dublin, Dundalk and Kerry. In
most cases the reason given was that the people being
punished were ecstasy dealers. The murders in the six
counties were claimed by Direct Action Against Drugs.
This organisation does not exist in any real sense, it is
widely believed to be nothing more than a cover name
for the IRA. That is why the Sinn Fein "does not
condone" the killings but "will not condemn" them
either.
Ecstasy use, like using any drug , is not to be encouraged.
It is dangerous. But there has been a lot of nonsense
talked about 'E'. It is a lot less likely to kill regular users
than tobacco. Just as many smoked dope in the 1970s,
the 1990s generation takes ecstasy. When asked by the
'Sunday Tribune' (January 7th) why the IRA was not
doing anything about tobacco or alcohol abuse Noel
Sheridan, a Sinn Fein councillor in Armagh, replied
that they were "not illegal". So now you know,
republicans' primary concern is for upholding the law!
The biggest - though not the only - risks come from
cutting the drug with dangerous substances, from there
being no way of knowing the strength of an illegal drug,
and from club owners turning off taps to force
dehydrated dancers to buy bottled water.
So why did the IRA start to kill alleged ecstasy dealer
when they didn't kill heroin bosses like Larry Dunne
and Ma Baker a decade ago? The IRA may have a
concern that overconfident criminals might eventually
start dealing in hard drugs, or that "criminal gangs will
dominate working class communities" ('AP/RN'
editorial, January 11th).
More likely is that it was a way of demonstrating, to the
Mitchell Commission and the British government, that
an armed campaign can be resumed; that the IRA has
not gone away. By targeting alleged drug dealers at a
time of great concern and a lot of media hype about
drug abuse there was far less chance of a public outcry.
More importantly, they can not be accused of breaking
the ceasefire as they are not shooting RUC or soldiers.
The campaign of murders and beatings is authoritarian
thuggery. The IRA/DADD have no mandate to make
the rules about drug use and abuse. They certainly have
no right to set themselves up as judge, jury and
executioner. What would the IRA's reaction be if the
RUC went around executing alleged drug dealers? Or
have they already forgotten all they used to say about
torture, non-jury courts and shoot-to-kill?
Editorial Collective
the DRUGS debate
bans or legalisation
SINCE THE DAYS of Concerned Parents Against Drugs
(CPAD), the growth of the heroin problem in inner-city
Dublin has largely gone without comment. In the last
few months, two factors have pushed it back into the
spotlight - the government's declaration of a 'War on
Drugs', and the emergence of the city-wide campaign
against heroin which has been set up by Inner City
Organisations Network. In this article, we look at these
campaigns, and how we, as anarchists, would deal with
the problem of drug-abuse.
Not War, But Containment
It's not a coincidence that the heroin problem is
concentrated in communities with the highest rates of
unemployment, worst housing, etc. The inner-cities
have been written-off already, it doesn't make political
sense to spend money on people who are poor,
unemployed, and probably don't vote anyway. Besides
which, everyone knows that as long as these areas
remain run-down unemployment black-spots, people
are going to keep turning to drugs, if only because
there's nothing else to turn to.
Instead, the government is concentrating on soft drugs,
cannabis and Ecstasy mainly, because these are the drugs
which have broken out of the ghetto. Even the most
paranoid suburban parent is unlikely to think that their
teenage son or daughter is developing a smack habit, it's
much easier to picture them smoking a joint or taking
an E at a rave. These parents are the swing voters, the
people that political parties must win over to get
elected, so they are the ones at whom the publicity
campaign must be targeted. The proof of this is in the
number of customs seizures of heroin as opposed to
those of hash or E.
Easy Targets
There are few, if any, grounds for criminalising
cannabis. Countless studies have shown it to be a drug
that is not addictive and has next to no adverse physical
effects, especially compared to alcohol and nicotine,
Ireland's drugs of choice. Ecstasy, though dangerous in
large quantities (as with most drugs, legal or illegal), is
safe at its normal dosage provided basic guidelines are
followed1, drinking enough water if dancing, etc. The
two main health risks associated with using Ecstasy are
of allergic reaction - a small percentage of people can be
killed by a bee sting, a similar number of people may
have an equally dangerous reaction to E - and the fact
that not everything sold as Ecstasy is in fact MDMA.
Lack of testing facilities means that people are at risk
from unscrupulous dealers.
Because neither of these drugs is addictive, it is
(relatively) easy to control their usage. Heroin is a
different matter. The physical craving for heroin, and
the side-effects of withdrawal, prove unbearable for
many, and ensure that there is a steady demand, even if
the price is driven up by raids or seizures at customs. It
requires a lot of resources to deal with the problem of
heroin in any meaningful way. Needle exchanges are
essential to stop the spread of disease through dirty
needles. Helping someone get off heroin means
supplying them with other drugs to lessen the
withdrawal symptoms, providing them with support
facilities so that they do actually clean up rather than
just develop another addiction, and finally, making
sure that there is an alternative waiting for them so that
they don't get hooked again six months after detoxing.
Anti-Social Drugs
The absence of this support means that heroin is likely
to remain a problem in Dublin for some time. But it is
important to realise exactly what the problem is. Too
often, analysis goes no further than 'Drugs are bad,
heroin is a drug, therefore heroin is bad'. Given that
most of the people reading this article will have used
some illegal drug - acid, E, speed, almost certainly
cannabis - this is hardly a very credible argument. The
difference with heroin (the most common 'hard' drug
in Ireland) is that it is highly addictive.
Smack is an expensive habit, and since most drug users
(like most smokers, heavy drinkers, and Lottery
'players') come from poor backgrounds, they have to
turn to crime. Addiction to something as demanding as
heroin means that most users cannot afford a sense of
social responsibility. This is the destructive side of
drugs, this is why it is not mere moralism to describe
heroin as a problem. When so much of crime is related
to a particular drug, that drug is obviously a problem.
Solutions?
So what can we do? The first step is to stop treating
drugs as one undifferentiated mass, and to distinguish
between those that are physically dangerous and those
that are not, between those that are addictive and those
that are not. If we allow people to smoke cigarettes, why
not allow people equal access to other recreational
drugs, perhaps with the same age restrictions as apply to
alcohol consumption. Legalisation would allow
regulation, which in turn allows testing, so that people
won't be poisoned by dealers ripping them off.
For more serious drugs, there are a number of options.
At the very least, the current type of support
programme needs to be properly funded. More sensible
approaches could also be tried. For example, a doctor in
England used to supply all of his addicted patients with
medical heroin, which was both safer for them, as it
removed the risks involved with using heroin
available on the street - often cut with other drugs and
of varying strengths - and better for those around them,
as it allowed them to live a relatively normal life.
The fundamental question is of freedom. People must
be free to do what they like with their own bodies, but
the freedom of others must not be restricted. Where a
drug effects only the user, like cannabis or LSD, there
can be no excuse for preventing a mature adult from
using it. If a drug effects others, like heroin, alcohol
(indirectly responsible for how many road deaths and
assaults per year?), or nicotine (cigarette smoke is bad
for everyone who breathes it in, not just the smoker),
then we can justify restricting its use to situations where
bystanders are not harmed. In short, then, we call for
the decriminalisation of drugs, to allow people to make
up their own minds on what they will use, and to make
the circumstances under which they make that choice as
safe as possible.
Ray Cunningham
1 Though there are very few studies on the effects of
long-term usage.