The Government should consider new approaches to the drug problem, including prescribing legal heroin, according to a member of the National Drugs Strategy Team (NDST).
Father Sean Cassin, former head of the Merchants Quay project, told a Dail Committee yesterday that a Swiss project prescribing heroin to addicts had claimed "significantly good" results. The NDST is the statutory agency set up to co-ordinate the work of local drugs task forces.
"We're not in favour of anybody using or injecting drugs," Father Cassin told the Joint Committee on European Affairs. "But today some 10,000 injecting drug users are going to take heroin, they're going to inject it and find or rob or steal the materials necessary to inject it."
The Swiss experiment involved around 1,100 heroin users over three years, he said. "There was a significant reduction in the level of crime. One third actually went into drug-free treatment and a further third went on to maintenance programmes of oral alternatives to heroin."
Father Cassin said one criticism of the Swiss project had been that it had picked those addicts more likely to succeed.
"We have a situation here in Dublin at the moment where the use of cannabis is, in reality, decriminalised." If the Gardai pursued all cannabis users then the system would be overwhelmed, he said. So a pragmatic approach was taken in Dublin, where heroin was the main concern. Mr Fergus McCabe of the NDST told the committee that the debate about such projects could "lead to all kind of hysterical and irrational responses." "We can't have good policies, rational or effective policies, unless we have information," he said. There was an "urgent need" for a national drugs advisory board, he said.
"In every other jurisdiction in Europe there is an advisory group or council there." Ireland's drug policy had been the result of health policy on the prevention of AIDS, he said. Mr Tony Gregory (Independent) said the Swiss experience was that heroin crossed all social classes. Mr Gay Mitchell (FG) criticised the Eastern Health Board for its response to the problem. "Inchicore was devastated by people coming from all over the city to one chemist to get their methadone."
Senator Brendan Ryan (Independent) said the Swiss police "had the peculiar role of having to deliver heroin to the clinics," because of security considerations. And a report, almost completed by members of the committee would be about "neither liberal nor conservative solutions, but what has been seen to work."
Father Cassin said politicians were afraid to decriminalise drugs.
