The annual report for 1999 of the 10-year-old Merchant's Quay Project - set up to try to grapple with the growing problem of drug addiction in Dublin - provides a useful snapshot of the current state of play in the war against heroin in our capital city. It leaves no room for the Government to become complacent about its anti-drug policies, revealing as it does, an increase in drug deaths in the city during the year under review, and an increase of almost one third in the number of client visits to the organisation's open-access services.
There were more than 30,000 visits in 1999, nearly 700 of them representing first-time calls of drug abusers to make contact with any treatment services. In addition, it reports continuing difficulties with the establishment of local services to meet the immediate needs of young people in crisis situations as a result of their drug-taking.
Given that the current best "guesstimate" of the number of heroin abusers in Dublin is in excess of 13,000, of whom substantially less than one half are in any kind of treatment programme, it is likely that the numbers contacting the Merchant's Quay Project will continue to rise in coming years, adding to that very active project's prodigious work-load, and to the burden of all the other agencies offering support and treatment for drug abuse in the city. As Tony Geoghegan, the director of the project, states in his annual report, "there is an immediate need to develop a range of accessible programmes at local level that have the capacity to attract and retain drug users in treatment. Leadership will be required by Government in promoting and funding such services to enable appropriate responses to be made".
At the moment it is estimated that about 4,500 former heroin addicts are on methadone substitution programmes which may bring some sort of order to the addicts' reckless and deeply disordered lives. But to substitute methadone for heroin is not to offer a permanent solution to either the individual or the community afflicted with addiction - and there are still fewer than 100 residential drug-free treatment places. While treatment for those addicted must be central to any anti-drugs programme, it can be only a small component of the ultimate objective of achieving a drug-free state for both the individuals and the communities in which they live. It can take at least a generation to achieve this and, as has been pointed out many times over, it requires massive State intervention - far greater than anything seen to date from this or previous Irish governments.
One of the root causes of drug addiction is social exclusion and, in Dublin, the areas worst hit by addiction are those districts neglected for decades by the State in terms of investment in social, educational, recreational, therapeutic, environmental and cultural infrastructure. They now need this investment immediately if there is to be any hope of creating an environment where young people feel no need of recourse to drugs. Meanwhile, addiction will continue to spread and misery and crime rates and disease and death will continue to rise.
It is high time that the Government grasped the urgency of its task. In this context, the Minister for Finance needs to develop some social concern to go with his fiscal concern. To detect an individual drug addict and to intervene therapeutically at an early stage, is to increase the prospect of a full recovery. Community intervention equally requires an early and appropriate and massive response if it is to work.