A leading social campaigner has warned there is little point in trying to educate teenagers about drugs because it is too late by then.
Fr Peter McVerry was speaking at the launch of a report by the Southern Regional Drugs Task Force, which found that almost 85pc of people who accessed treatment for drug addition in the region last year did so for alcohol-related problems.
But the conference also heard that there has been a 50pc increase in the consumption of heroin outside Dublin in recent years.
And Fr McVerry, who works with young homeless people in Dublin, told the Killarney conference that the war on drugs had already been lost and that "parents were hopelessly ignorant about the whole drugs culture".
Source: Majella O'Sullivan, The Irish Independent, 09/10/2010