THE drug problem will get worse if the State continues to promote methadone, free needles and other "harm-reduction" measures to tackle addiction, a new campaign group claims.
Eurad (Europe Against Drugs) aims to "roll back" official policies in these areas, and advocates abstinence as the answer to drug addiction.
At a meeting in Dublin last week Eurad criticised "liberal" and "harm- reduction" policies, and warned that they could be steps towards eventual legalisation of drugs. Ms Grainne Kenny the Eurad chairwoman, said the State had been "putting more and more emphasis on methadone as a treatment but it can only form part of a treatment."
She produced speakers from Switzerland and the Netherlands who argued that "liberal" policies on drugs use had led to a growth in addiction in both countries.
Ms Kenny resigned from the Dublin Lord Mayor's Commission on Drugs three weeks ago, after it decided to advocate harm-reduction policies in a report published last Wednesday.
The current Government is broadly committed to the same route, although Fianna Fail has warned of the dangers of methadone and suggested addicts' use of it should be reviewed after five years on a methadone programme.
Ms Kenny said it was "scandalous" that few politicians attended last week's Eurad meeting. "I do regret that people have not come from all the political parties to listen and to learn," she said.
In the Republic "harm-reduction" takes the form of free needle exchanges, so that injecting abusers will not share needles which could spread HIV and other viruses. It also means distribution of methadone to about 2,000 opiate-abusers in Dublin.
The aim is to wean them off their heroin addiction, but privately officials accept that 10 per cent or less eventually become drug-free.
Methadone, most commonly taken in the form of a yellow-orange liquid, is drunk rather than injected. It provides only a weak "high" compared with other opiates, and addicts often combine it with other drugs.
The official push to widen distribution of methadone to Dublin's opiate addicts over the past year has led to fears that counselling and other supports which addicts should also receive are being left to one side. It has also resulted in a busy black market in the substitute drug.
At the meeting the Sinn Fein councillor, Mr Christy Burke, said a distraught constituent recently told him she had spent Pounds 90 on a black- market bottle of methadone for her addicted son.
"I honestly believe now that methadone is not the answer. It's another drug and it can develop another addiction," he said.
The Trinity Court drug treatment centre in Dublin and the Eastern Health Board are the State's major distributors of methadone.
At the meeting Dr John O'Connor, medical director at Trinity Court, said methadone was "a highly dangerous and addictive drug in its own right, and it has to be treated with the greatest caution possible."
He said methadone "had a place" in responding to opiate addiction, but was not an answer to it.
The Eastern Health Board said later that it distributed methadone through clinics and GPs as part of "a total package of care which includes a full assessment of the patients, full primary medical care, ongoing counselling support and urine screening".