Drug addiction not choice, but healthcare issue, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin tells conference.
Proposals to change drugs legislation to allow for medically supervised drug injection centres will be brought before Cabinet this month, a conference on drugs in Dublin has heard.
Minister of State for the national drugs strategy, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin told the Citywide conference on communities and drugs at Croke Park that he and Minister for Health Leo Varadkar would bring forward the proposals to amend the Misuse of Drugs Acts.
He told said addiction was not a choice, it was a healthcare issue. Yet there was still a “shame” clinging to the entire debate.
We have to break that shame and stigma attached to addiction and to those who were making a “heroic” recovery and effort to “re-brick” their lives, he said.
Addressing the conference, President Michael D Higgins said so many problems, including drug addiction and the effects of climate change, fall “most heavily and first” on those in society with the least capacity to deal with them.
Mr Higgins said there could be very few people in Ireland today whose lives had not been touched by addiction in some form or other.
Source: Elaine Edwards, The Irish Times, 12/11/15
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