How will historians, sociologists, lawmakers, and medical experts explain it to future generations? How will they justify the more than 40 years of prejudice that has resulted in the cruel and inhumane treatment of drug users?
The latest example of this prejudice is the flood of objections Dublin City Council has received to a planning application from Merchants Quay Ireland to set up a pilot medically supervised injecting facility.
MQI already provides services to help drug users stay as safe and healthy as possible, including a needle exchange programme. The idea now, according to MQI’s planning application, is to set up seven booths inside their building, where people could safely inject drugs under medical supervision.
This would be a good, useful thing, says Karl Grant, who is 39. “I’m homeless since age 12, I’m on drugs since childhood,” he told me, recently. “I’m suffering from lung disease and chronic hepatitis. I’m not injecting today but if I was I’d need to be be in a place where I can use that is sterile, otherwise I’d die. I can’t heal from a cold properly today.”
Source: Anne Buckley, 9th January 2019
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