THE LORD Mayor of Cork has outlined plans for a new strategy to combat Cork’s growing heroin problem through recruiting more GPs to help with methadone treatment to cut the waiting lists of addicts seeking assistance.
Dara Murphy told The Irish Timesthat he planned to establish a small working group comprising political representatives, senior gardaí and medical experts from the HSE to address the growing problem of heroin addiction in the city.
Earlier this week, a Cork City Council joint policing committee heard from Dr Declan O’Brien of the HSE Arbour House treatment centre, who said there were 150 heroin addicts waiting assessment to see if they were suitable to go on a methadone treatment programme.
It will be next year before these people are assessed, as there are only two doctors at Arbour House qualified to assess addicts, said Dr O’Brien, who added that there had been a huge rise in heroin addicts seeking help, with over 100 people attending in both 2007 and 2008.
Chief Supt Liam Hayes also reported a serious increase in heroin use resulting in six heroin deaths in 2007 and eight in 2008, while there had been four drug deaths in the city in the past five weeks for which gardaí were still awaiting toxicology reports.
Mr Murphy said he hoped to meet the HSE and representatives of GPs in the city to see if more doctors could be trained for the assessment and distribution of methadone, which is currently done through nine pharmacies in the city.
“It’s unacceptable to me that we have 150 people wanting to get help but who will have to wait until next year before they are even assessed.
“In an ideal world, we would be calling for more resources for Arbour House, but that’s not likely to happen in the immediate future.
“There are two levels involved in prescribing methadone and what I would envisage is getting more GPs involved in assessment through their own clinics and they then becoming involved in prescribing methadone for their patients,” he said.
Mr Murphy said that while Cork had a growing heroin problem, with experts warning that it will hit the same crisis level as Dublin in the 1980s, the size of Cork and its smaller population meant a different model could be used to tackle the problem.
“What we must try to do is avoid some of the mistakes made elsewhere. The use of methadone clinics, for example, in Dublin meant that people who were trying to get off heroin were congregating together and meeting other addicts, with many suffering relapses.
“As well as that, it provided an easy target for dealers. So we want to try and avoid that, and given that we are a smaller city, it should be possible to deal with the problem through GPs and pharmacies, where people are dealt with on a more one-to-one basis,” he said. Mr Murphy added that it was important that those on methadone programmes would be dealt with on an individual basis, with each addict being given an appointment time to avoid those trying to get off the drug meeting other addicts.
He said it was important that establishing a more broadly- available methadone programme in Cork to deal with the problem would not attract heroin addicts from other areas, which could lead to an escalation of the problem.
“We already have a local drugs taskforce but what I’m hoping is to develop is a small tightly-knit group of no more than six people with no more than two from each group – the political, the medical and the Garda – to tackle the problem in a holistic way,” he said.