THE community in south inner city Dublin, which has "the worst drug problem in the State", needs to "take ownership" of the problem and work closely with statutory agencies to combat it, according to a new report.
The report - the first survey of the extent and effects of drug abuse and drug services in the south inner city - says the area is going through a "second epidemic" that is worse than the drugs crisis of the early 1980s.
Some 1,500 of Dublin city's estimated 12,000 drug addicts live in the south inner city, according to Mr Fearghal Connolly, co-ordinator of the local voluntary drug agency, Community Response.
Community Response commissioned the report, Dealing with the Nightmare: Drug Use and Intervention Strategies in South Inner City Dublin, which surveyed addicts, drug agencies and addicts' families.
Heroin addiction, the report says, is a "form of protest against the over-riding lack of opportunity and deprivation" experienced by many young people in the community.
The drug epidemic has divided the community and created tension between drug users and "straight" members and the effect of local anti-drugs campaigns is limited as long as the demand for heroin continues, it says.
Threats and evictions by vigilante groups make families anxious and adds social stigma to their problems with drug-using relatives. "The result is fear, division and unrest in many areas."
Drug treatment facilities in the area are described as "very limited," with no rehabilitation or training programmes for ex-addicts, no services for very young drug users, especially heroin smokers, and long waiting lists for treatment.
"The absence of sufficient treatment services and diversionary programmes for young people contributes enormously to the sense of abandonment felt in these communities," the report says.
It recommends a wide range of community-driven and government-funded responses. These include at least three locally-based drug treatment clinics operating with community support as well as training, job opportunities and recreation facilities. It also calls for more rehabilitation programmes, outreach work and school information work.
The clinics would provide easier access to methadone maintenance as a way to stop addicts injecting, residential detoxification places, a needle exchange, general medical services, HIV testing and counselling.
The report is based on a survey, carried out last year, of 38 agencies providing services to drug users from the south inner city and interviews with 26 addicts, aged between 14 and 33, and 18 families with a drug addict member.
It was launched yesterday by the Minister of State at the Department of Commerce Science and Technology, Mr Pat Rabbitte, who is chairman of the Ministerial Task Force on Drugs.
Over half of the drug addicts interviewed for the report had spent time in prison. One in five was unemployed. Two thirds were aged 23 or younger and 69 per cent had left school before 16 years of age. All of them had at least two children. None had completed their Leaving Certificate. Heroin was the preferred drug of 92 per cent and more than one in five said they had tried to give up drugs. Most used a variety of drugs in addition to heroin, on which they spent between £10 and over £90 per day. Almost two thirds said they resorted to crime, chiefly robbery, to get their drug money.
The addicts said the major difficultly in staying off drugs was the easy availability of them in the area and the numbers of peers using drugs.
Drug use is not an isolated problem, but a symptom of other problems, the report says.
The south inner city community feels marginalised, ghettoised and "totally neglected" by the government, with some people perceiving their areas as "dumping grounds".
The area is experiencing its fourth generation of poverty, with substandard housing and unemployment as high as 80 per cent in some flats complexes where there is a "chronic absence of recreational or educational facilities".
"It is not an accident that this is a multiply deprived area. Heroin addiction can be seen as a form of protest against the over-riding lack of opportunity and deprivation being experienced by so many young people in this community and there is a need to take account of the structural issues and to treat not the just the symptoms but the structural causes.
"People need services centring on drug use, but they also need alternatives to drug use, employment, training and education."
Mr Rabbitte said he agreed that a range of locally based, community driven and government funded responses to the drugs problem was needed. He said he was confident these issues could be addressed through the local drugs task forces which are operating in 11 areas of Dublin city.