In the new issue of Hot Press, our man Stuart Clark goes for a walk round Dublin city-centre with the Director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project, Tony Duffin.
"One presumes there’s a reason for the CCTV camera, which monitors Dublin 2’s rubbish-strewn Dawson Lane, but it’s clearly not to deter the heroin addicts who use it to shoot-up," Stuart writes. "Mushrooms and wild garlic are what the middle-classes normally go foraging for, but in an altogether grittier inner city version, less than 100 metres from the Dáil, Tony Duffin, has helped us find five discarded syringes; the same number of empty wraps, stained yellow by the citric acid they most likely contained; strips of blackened tinfoil; balled up antiseptic wipes; several piles of fresh human excrement, and an upturned wheelie bin to guard against both the elements – it was minus three degrees and sheeting rain last night in the capital – and observing eyes.
There’s a lemon skin among the detritus too, but it wasn’t left by somebody who popped down there for an emergency pancake.
“If people don’t have citric acid to cook their heroin up with, they use either a real lemon or one of the Jif ones,” Tony Duffin explains. “With real lemon, though, you’re prone to fungal infections that can cause blindness.”
We find similar evidence of heroin use just yards from where dozens of TDs have their Dáil offices.
Read the full report in the new special flip-cover Hot Press, which has either David Bowie or Walking On Cars staring at you from the shelves!
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