The age at which first-time drug users are charged and brought before the courts should be raised from 18 because many young people caught using drugs do not reoffend, a Garda inspector has said.
Det Insp Tom Duggan, of the Garda Divisional Drugs Unit in Waterford city, was speaking last night at the second of a series of regional meetings to review the national drugs strategy. The conference was told drugs were found in the smallest villages in Ireland.
He said persons under 18 were at present cautioned by their local Garda superintendent under the Garda Juvenile Liaison scheme if they broke the law. He believed this scheme should be extended to include first-time drug offenders over this age.
Speaking at the review for the south-eastern region in Kilkenny, the Garda inspector said all types of drugs were now becoming available to much younger age groups, regardless of their background. Primary school pupils were also coming into contact with drugs and preventive measures needed to be put in place at this stage, he said.
"We are going to have to get into our schools at a younger age. At the moment our juvenile liaison officers can go into the secondary schools and give talks in relation to drugs and drug activity. We can only go into the national schools if a principal looks for us to give a talk.
"We have a primary schools programme running in relation to other areas of criminal law like road safety, but I think that if we were to get into our schools at an earlier age to talk about drugs it would be very beneficial.
"We have 13- and 14-year-olds who have come in contact with drugs. Unless we get in and educate them at a very early age, by the time we get to them some will be out of the juvenile liaison officer's area of responsibility and the next stop will be the courts, and unfortunately that is not always the answer to a drugs problem," he said.
Det Insp Duggan added that drugs were not just available in urban areas of the south-east. They had been found in "the smallest villages and townlands" and dealers were prepared to go into any area where there were young people. People had to be aware of this, he said.
He added that ecstasy and amphetamines were available "in abundance" in Waterford city and young people attending nightclubs in the area had said there were always people present, ready and willing to push drugs on them.
He said drug seizures in the region had increased, as had prosecutions. "I don't have the percentage of the amount we are seizing. It's a small percentage at the end of the day; we have to expect that," he added. Ms Rosemary Finane, a project worker with Kilkenny Drugs Initiative, said there were no easy solutions to the issue, but she wanted to see the review put more money behind projects such as hers to work in communities to prevent drug use and intervene when drug use had taken place.
She said she was the sole drug worker in Co Kilkenny, which had a population of 81,000. More were desperately needed. Family counselling was also needed to break the cycle of drug abuse in families where there was one abuser, she added.
"If you don't acknowledge substance mis-use takes place, then you are part of the problem. Young people are using substances and we have to acknowledge that. We have to stop denial. There is a lot of denial in Kilkenny and in our country that substances are used outside major urban centres like Dublin," she said.
Mr Eoin O'Neill, of the Waterford Regional Youth Centre, emphasised the importance of support structures so that communities could devise and put in place their own strategies to combat drug abuse. "We are not going to get rid of drugs, so we need these supports," he said.
He added that a drugs task force should be immediately established in the south-east. At present the only task force outside Dublin was in Cork.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of State for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Mr Eoin Ryan, who said it would take time for many of the measures currently being implemented to have a full impact on the problem.