Last night's Claire Byrne Live on RTÉ One found the Minister with Responsibility for Drugs, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, clashing with Mannix Flynn over the expected introduction this year of medically supervised injecting rooms in Dublin, and subsequently in other parts of Ireland.
Citing fact-based evidence from Australia, the Minister said they will save lives and reduce HIV and other infection rates, while Flynn, with his trademark bluster, dismissed the initiative as political smoke and mirrors in the run-up to the next election.
Mr. Flynn wasn't too keen on fact-based evidence either when he debated injecting rooms before Christmas with Anna Liffey Project Director, Tony Duffin, and our man Stuart Clark on Today FM's The Last Word.
We suspect that Mannix hasn't read our 'Injecting Rooms On The Horizon' article, in which Tony Duffin states: “In the 15 years the Sydney centre’s been open, they’ve never had a death and have intervened in 4,500 overdoses. One of the stats that stands out is that they’ve seen an 80% reduction in ambulance call- outs. Drug abusers are often referred to as ‘super utilisers of A&E’ – there’s an average one overdose a day in Ireland – which is an expensive service. If there are less intravenous drug users presenting to A&E you’re obviously saving money.
"While I was in Sydney I met with police officers, politicians and business owners and without fail everyone said it was better having medically supervised injection centres and even talk about it being their medically supervised injection centre. The fear is of a honey pot effect and being ‘overrun by addicts’, but there’s very strong evidence to prove that isn’t the case."
The story was very much the same when we spoke recently to one of the team behind the InSite medically supervised injecting centre in Vancouver.
“Previously, people would go into, say, a clinic and go, ‘I want to get off drugs, I want to detox’ and be given an appointment that invariably they’d fail to keep because their lives are so chaotic," we were told. "Here, when they’re ready to go and detox, they just walk upstairs.
"Case studies show that nothing else has worked for these people in the past,” they continued. “Slowly they gain confidence and are able to start making constructive decisions in relation to their drug use. We’ve gone from almost Third World levels of HIV transmission to having one of the lowest rates in Canada. Sometimes there’ll be a bad batch of heroin and the police will tell people, ‘Go to InSite because if you get into difficulty they’ll be able to help’.
“From a purely monetary point of view, the city is saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from police, ambulance, firefighter and other first responder crews not having to attend to people who’ve overdosed down alleys. The local community benefits because they’re no longer injecting in public, and there’s a reduced strain on hospital emergency departments. Supervised injecting centres work on every front.”
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A member of the studio audience, who'd tragically lost a son to addiction, referred to the in-depth report on heroin that Hot Press ran in 2010. There's little reason to think that the situation around the country has got any better since.
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Finally, you can do your bit to furnish Mannix Flynn with the facts by taking part in this year's Global Drug Survey, the biggest of its kind ever conducted at [link]globaldrugsurvey.com[/link]