Carey accused of downplaying drug use

THE DEPARTMENT of Community Affairs has been accused of failing to highlight the danger of mixing alcohol and cocaine.

Labour community affairs spokesman Jack Wall made the allegation as he claimed that Minister for Community Affairs Pat Carey had “watered down the extent of drug use” in Ireland.

Mr Carey rejected his claim and insisted he had “no intention of watering down any findings on drug use”.

The Minister said “the drugs problem is serious. Even if Ireland did not feature in any league tables, as far as I am concerned any abuse of drugs is an abuse too much.”

The Dáil heard the drug use figures reported last month by the Health Research Board which showed that Ireland ranked fifth highest in the EU for cocaine use. Ten people died in 2003 from cocaine but the number of deaths jumped dramatically by 2007 to 63, and the number of cocaine seizures in the same period trebled from 566 to 1,749, but decreased significantly last year. Some 74 per cent of all drug-related deaths such as overdose poisoning, were due to opiates or opiates used with other drugs.

During question time Mr Wall said he had raised a number of times “the danger of cocaethylene, the chemical caused by mixing alcohol and cocaine.

Unfortunately, over the past several days we saw how this has emerged again.

“However, the Department and other drug abuse agencies have not highlighted the danger of mixing alcohol and cocaine.” The Kildare South TD said “we saw how in the past several days the death of one person, a sad and unfortunate individual who was prominent in radio and television led to reams of newspaper columns on the circumstances surrounding his death. Accordingly we must not water down survey’s results but highlight them to youngsters about the dangers of drug use.”

Rejecting any suggestion of the watering down of drug usage levels, the Minister pointed out that the report showed that 55 per cent of opiate users were in treatment in 2007. “In Dublin the average waiting time for a substitution treatment is between two and six weeks.”

But those outside Dublin can wait up to two years. Mr Carey said he had concentrated since his appointment on improving those waiting times in Leinster.