THE NUMBER of heroin users in treatment has reached record levels since the recession began and is increasing most significantly in the regions, according to the biggest drug treatment group in the Republic.
Merchants Quay Ireland has also seen severe pressure on its services for the homeless as a “rising tide of desperation” pushes more people on to the streets and into chronic drug addiction.
Chief executive Tony Geoghegan said the recent “steep rise” in unemployment and poverty levels did not bode well for likely drug patterns in the months and years ahead.
“We know from our own history that high levels of long-term youth unemployment fed the drugs crisis in the 1980s. A rising tide of desperation is in danger of sinking many boats,” he said.
The increased levels of drug abuse and resultant higher demand for the organisation’s services were occurring at a time when the project’s funding had been cut by up to 10 per cent in some areas.
“Addressing the drugs crisis is fundamentally about reducing human misery or it is about nothing, it should not be reduced to economics,” he said.
Mr Geoghegan was speaking ahead of the publication this morning of Merchants Quay Ireland annual report for 2009.
The report, to be launched by former Mountjoy Prison governor John Lonergan, will reveal a 9 per cent increase in drug users presenting for treatment last year to the project’s facilities nationwide.
The organisation is now delivering services to 9,422 people in 11 counties, facts which it says reflect the “growing crisis” of drug addiction and related homelessness across Ireland.
Following last year’s increases in clients requesting help, the facility has seen a 17 per cent increase in demand for its homelessness services so far this year. Other key aspects of its annual report include:
- The heroin problem continued unabated last year, with 642 new injectors presenting to its needle exchange programmes.
- The needle exchange programme had 30,000 visits from drug users last year.
- Some 205 people presented for treatment to its drug treatment and harm reduction facility in Athlone, Co Westmeath, last year.
- The Athlone office is this year continuing to assist increasing numbers of drug users and their families from across the four counties it serves, namely Westmeath, Offaly, Laois and Longford.
- The number of inmates engaging with drug treatment services run by the organisation in the State's 13 prisons exceeded 1,000 for the first time last year, of which 53 per cent identified heroin as their primary drug.
- Merchants Quay Ireland provided 45,725 meals to the homeless last year, with 400 people receiving meals every Sunday at the project's facility in Dublin's south inner city.
- It provided 3,216 healthcare interventions last year through its network of GPs, nursing staff, dentists, counsellors and chiropodists.
The facility provides a range of drug treatment, homeless and health services to drug users, who are mostly heroin addicts and many of whom are also homeless. It also runs outreach services and support services for the families of those in crisis.
Its treatment options include methadone projects to help maintain drug users as they turn away from heroin, and also residential rehabilitation and detoxification courses. It runs harm-reduction programmes such as injecting workshops and needle exchanges.
The project is now 40 years old and has its main facility on Merchants Quay, Dublin 2. It has other services in Kildare, Wicklow, Roscommon, Carlow, Cork, Laois, Longford, Offaly and Westmeath.