The drug problem in Ireland is now approaching 1980s levels with dealers openly supplying drugs "under the noses" of the Garda and using towns and villages around the country as "greenfield" sites for their operations, the Labour Party has claimed.
The party claims the "war on drugs" has been "a total waste of money" and is currently costing the taxpayer €1 billion a year.
Speaking on the publication of the party's submission to the mid-term review of the National Drugs Strategy 2001-2008, Labour's justice spokesman Mr Joe Costello called on the Government to "go back to the drawing board" on a strategy he termed "a failure".
He called on the Government to put in place a junior minister with access to Cabinet specifically to deal with the National Drugs Strategy and also for proper funding and resources for the policy. The party's submission also suggests that the National Drugs Strategy should consider alcohol as part of the "family" of drugs because of increasing links between alcohol abuse and drug abuse.
Mr Costello said that for 15 or 16 years, in the 1980s and 1990s, heroin "scarcely left the border of the [Dublin] metropolitan area". But since then, it has spread to other communities throughout Ireland and to disadvantaged communities.
He specifically cited cocaine, a drug that was almost unknown in local communities just a few years ago, he said, as a growing problem. There are 2,200 heroin addicts presenting for treatment outside Dublin at present, he continued.
The drugs and crime strategy put in place by the government of 1996 following the assassination of journalist Veronica Guerin had been allowed to slip, Mr Costello claimed.
He said the Garda had "pretty much lost the battle" in controlling the spread of drugs and that in disadvantaged communities throughout Dublin and the rest of the country, drug distribution was taking place "under the noses" of the gardai.
The Labour TD said Mountjoy Prison in Dublin was "the biggest drugs centre in the country" and that no person had ever been "hauled before the courts" or prosecuted for supplying drugs within the prison. The governor of the prison himself had gone on record to state that about 75 per cent of the prisoners in Mountjoy were on drugs, Mr Costello said.
He added that there was "huge frustration" among community organisations, particularly among voluntary groups and local drugs task forces trying to fulfil their part of the partnership on the drugs isssue because they had been "starved of resources".
His Labour colleague, Dr Mary Upton said she would like to see more action on policing and she cited problems in her own Dublin South Central constituency where traders were closing up because of drug-related problems. She said there was also a problem with pregnant women becoming drug addicts and their babies becoming addicted to drugs such as heroin as a result.
"It's absolutely tragic to see mothers with buggies waiting for their fix of methadone," she said.
Dr Upton also called for investment in research on the drugs problem.
Kildare South TD Mr Jack Wall said the idea that drugs were a problem just in major areas of population was a "figment of the imagination". He added that there was a major problem in relation to local gardai addressing the problem because they did not have the necessary back up.