PRIMARY pupils in selected schools are to be warned of the dangers of heroin from next month. A new drug awareness programme is to begin in certain primary schools before the end of this school term, the Minister for Education announced yesterday.
Schools in "disadvantaged" areas of Dublin, Cork and Limerick will have a programme focused on heroin to reflect the level of abuse of the drug in those areas. Already, 10 people have been trained in the programme and these will now start training teachers, Ms Breathnach said.
The move stems from a Government decision last February which set out plans for a wider anti drug programme in schools, involving parents, school management and teachers. Ms Breathnach said the involvement of parents was crucial.
A video featuring a young girl watching her sister becoming addicted to heroin has been prepared and will be shown in schools as part of the programme.
The Minister was speaking after addressing a conference in Dublin yesterday on drug abuse prevention and education. The conference, organised by the Departments of Health and Education with EU support, was aimed at helping people involved in education to exchange information about the best way to prevent drug abuse.
A 16 year old pupil from Killinarden Community School in Dublin, Glen Gibbons, told the conference he believed more money should be spent on sports facilities, as a way to reduce drug abuse. "Most students who play sport don't abuse drugs," he said.
Sinead Murphy (14), from the same school, agreed: "I think if there were more sports facilities, like football pitches and basketball courts that opened all the time, not just during school hours, and more clubs in my area, teenagers would not be hanging around the streets getting involved in drugs."
Dr Ernst Buning, of the Bureau for International Affairs in The Netherlands, said any suggestion that the law enforcement approach and its "war on drugs" could succeed was "just a big political hype".
He said he could not understand why, when there were tonnes of heroin and cocaine coming into Europe from Asia and South America, people should focus on the coffee shops of Amsterdam which sell cannabis.
He said the Dutch authorities had been right to tolerate sale and use of "soft drugs" such as cannabis in the shops, because this kept the market for these drugs separate from the more dangerous "hard drugs".
"If your kids want to experiment with soft drugs at least they can do it in an environment where as a parent you can be 100 per cent sure there will be no hard drugs," he said.
He added that surveys had shown heroin was "completely out of fashion with young people" in The Netherlands. There were 7,000 opiate addicts in Amsterdam compared with almost 9,000 in the late 1980s, and only 1.5 per cent of current heroin users were 21 or younger.
Dr Buning said it was important not to "marginalise" young people who used drugs, because then it would be harder to communicate with them and encourage them to change. "If we expect people to behave in a responsible way, we must not push them out of society," he said.