Drugs plan to focus outside Dublin

The next national drugs strategy will address drug abuse in areas throughout Ireland, not just Dublin and Cork, the Minister …

The next national drugs strategy will address drug abuse in areas throughout Ireland, not just Dublin and Cork, the Minister responsible for the strategy signalled yesterday.

Mr Eoin Ryan, Minister of State for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, told a regional forum on the national drugs strategy that young people were "experimenting with drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy in almost every town and city in Ireland".

Currently just one of the 14 local drugs taskforces is based outside Dublin. And if drug abuse outside Dublin is left unchecked, "the same problems we have in Dublin will spread to other parts of the country," the Minister told the forum.

The new drugs strategy will be "in place" by the end of the year, he said.

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The meeting also heard that the Department of Health and Children has set up a working group to look at the prescription of tranquilisers. Dr Brion Sweeney, consultant psychiatrist with the Northern Area Health Board in Dublin, said the most difficult of cases were those in which people had multiple addictions.

Opiates such as heroin were not the only drugs that needed addressing. The abuse of tranquilisers and anti-depressants also needed attention.

A new residential facility at St Mary's in the Phoenix Park will include a 10-bedded adolescent unit, he said. Talks were going on with the voluntary sector about providing residential places for children whose mothers would benefit from residential treatment but who were reluctant to leave them.

Inspector Brian Sutton, of the Garda National Drugs Unit, said even minor drug-dealers could be seen as role models by despairing young people in deprived areas.