Successive government policies have damaged the country’s poorest communities and undermined local structures to combat the drugs crisis, according to new research.
The report said power has been removed from affected areas and centralised at government level, where the system is “utterly disconnected” from the needs of people and communities.
It said austerity “exacerbated” the problem by cutting funding to education, health, housing and welfare supports, local drug task- forces as well as community and voluntary groups.
The study said that since drug taskforces were set up in 1997 they have operated under four departments, eight ministers, eight major drug strategies, had undergone eight evaluations and reviews of their own effectiveness and, since 2008, “year on year” budget cuts.
The report, ‘Outcomes: Drug Harms, Policy Harms, Poverty and Inequality’, highlights the wider use of cannabis weed, tranquillisers, and hypnotics and the ensnaring of some young people as “runners and delivery boys” for dealers.
The research team was led by Aileen O’Gorman, a senior lecturer in Alcohol and Drug Studies at the University of West Scotland, and formerly of UCD.
The study, commissioned by the Clondalkin Drug and Alcohol Task Force, said that drug-related ‘harms’ consistently cluster in communities marked by poverty and social inequality.
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 05/07/16
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