Dublin students launch drug awareness campaign

The welfare officers of Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), University College Dublin (UCD) and Trinity College Dublin's (TCD) Students' Unions came together last week with Drugs.ie in Dublin's Mansion House to launch the 'What's in the Powder?' information campaign.

The campaign is a follow-up to 'What's in the Pill?' which was launched in October 2015 as an attempt to give those who  use illegal drugs with the information they need in order to minimise the risks involved with such activities.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Críona Ní Dhálaigh, who also launched the 2015 event, praised the work of the three welfare officers, saying that the 'just say no' approach has proven ineffective and that a new focus on drug-related crime and social issues is needed.

Speaking to a packed room, she said students "are intelligent people who will make their choice regardless, what is needed is a humane and person focused way of dealing with problems that arise."

Also addressing the audience, DIT welfare officer Lisette Golden quoted Oscar Wilde in saying that while "'Everything popular is wrong", and that students are likely to be drawn to drug-taking because of its taboo nature, that "with a harm reduction approach, we're trying to be realistic".

Golden's comments were echoed by UCDSU's Welfare Officer Clare O'Connor and her TCD counterpart Conor Clancy who also added that they were pleasantly surprised at the level of support they had received in launching the campaign.

Clancy went on to applaud the "breadth of age, backgrounds, and experiences in the room", something he felt demonstrated the increasing support for a harm reduction based approach to drug use since 2015's launch which was mainly attended by journalists and interest groups.

Representatives from DCU's Students' Union were absent from the event. While DCU hosts an active chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy Ireland, which has lobbied before Dáil Éireann on decriminalisation, negotiations to include its Students' Union in the campaign are said to have been unsuccessful as there was no mandate for it to take part in such campaigns.

National Strategy

At the Union of Students in Ireland (USI)'s national congress which took place in Ennis in late March, delegates of the umbrella body's member unions passed a number of motions calling on it to support decriminalisation and harm reduction through a national campaign.

Speaking to The College Tribune, UCD's independent student newspaper, USI president Kevin Donoghue said that he hoped the work done by the three students' unions could be continued, stressing that the form this will take remains uncertain.

UCDSU welfare officer Clare O'Connor expressed her hope that the campaign will continue to pick up steam over the coming year and that she and her counterparts will be working closely with their successors to ensure this happens.

She also expressed some surprise at the positive reception of the work of the campaign so far, explaining that while some were initially sceptical of it as a radical departure from what had come before, that many of those who were initially uncertain had allayed their fears and had come on board.

She explained that initially, the project was a joint effort between UCD and Drugs.ie but that Trinity and DIT had become involved in the early stages. Since the launch of 'What's in the Pill', "17 other third level institutions" as well as the Cork Drugs Taskforce had expressed interest due to the positive response it received.

Tony Duffin, director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project (Drugs.ie) also expressed his happiness at the support the campaign has received since its inception, adding that he also hopes to see a national harm reduction based approach to dealing with the problems associated with drug use.

He also expressed his thanks, and that of the three welfare officers to the campaign's supporters, among them the Lord Mayor, the HSE and former Minister of State for the National Drugs Strategy Aodhán Ó Riordán.

The continuation of the work started by Ó Riordán in establishing an evidence-based harm reduction approach to drug use is something that Duffin and the three welfare officers hope to see continued as a matter of priority for the new government when it is formed.

Speaking after the launch, Duffin said that while it is difficult to measure the success of a campaign aimed at providing information that "since October when we did the first part of the campaign, if we look at success from the point of view of dissemination that it's been very, very successful."