The INEF exists to actively develop, support, and sustain a network of high quality, comprehensive needle exchange and other harm reduction services across Ireland.
A crisis in the treatment of heroin addicts is helping to fuel a dramatic upsurge in burglaries across the country.
Drug addicts in large swathes of the country are facing a waiting list of more than a year before gaining access to treatment.
An Irish Independent investigation has found that heroin addicts in several areas outside Dublin, who want to be stabilised on methadone, are struggling to find a clinic or GP to take them on.
It comes as the number of heroin addicts across the country has grown from 16,000 to 21,000 in the past five years.
Much of the growth has been in cities such as Waterford, Limerick and Cork, fuelling an alarming spate of burglaries and thefts outside the capital.
Latest figures show that burglaries jumped by 7.9pc last year, compared with 2010, rising to a total of 27,439 offences.
A senior garda said: “There is no doubt that drug addiction, particularly among those hooked on heroin, helps fuel the amount of property crime.”
Contaminated heroin may have caused the deaths of twin brothers found dead yesterday in a rented Limerick apartment — and there are fears many more heroin users may have used a similar batch.
The mother of the men, named locally as Kevin and Peter Moran, became concerned after they had not made mobile phone contact for a number of days and was present when the grim discovery was made.
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Opium production will rise across Afghanistan in 2012, spreading to more parts of the country than it has in the last few years, according to a new annual assessment from the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The report found that this year, only 15 provinces will be free from poppy production – down from 20 provinces in 2009 and 2010 — and indicated a ”strong association between insecurity, lack of agricultural assistance and opium cultivation.”
Traditionally, UNODC’s assessments are issued with a press release, but as The Guardian notes, this year’s was published on the UNODC’s website with no publicity.
“We are back in the situation we had in 2007-08,” UNODC country representative Jean-Luc Lemahieu told the paper. “The Taliban definitely get income from opium cultivation … but the lion’s share of the income still disappears here, into the hands of the big patrons of this country.”
The prescription of substitution drugs, together with appropriate psychosocial support, is an integral part of today’s mainstream approach to treating heroin dependence. This has come about because over the last two decades, an increasing body of high-quality research has demonstrated the efficacy of using drugs such as methadone and buprenorphine to help stabilise and improve the health status of those dependent on illicit ‘street’ heroin. The weight of evidence has been sufficient to counterbalance legitimate concerns about the value of replacing one opioid drug with another. Most importantly, the development of good clinical practice and safeguards has ensured that any possible unintended negative consequences have been largely avoided. This is important for the prescription of medicines that themselves have considerable abuse potential.
As misuse of prescription drugs increases, treating addiction to these drugs has become as crucial as preventing it. Yet best practice in this area remains elusive. Last June, the UN fl agship World Drug Report 2011 launched by Ban Ki-moon outlined the scale of the problem— declining world markets for cocaine, heroin, and cannabis, almost entirely off set by increases in the misuse of prescription opioid drugs. Then, in November, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction annual report for 2011 painted a similar picture, showing that although drug misuse is fairly stable in Europe, there has been a striking increase in the misuse of synthetic opioid drugs.
But, as the most recent figures from the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) showed in December, it is the USA that is the epicentre of the world’s problems with prescription drugs.
IRELAND has the highest number of heroin users per capita in the EU, according to the annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Deaths for those on methadone programmes also appear to be on the rise.
There were 9,264 people on the HSE methadone programmes nationwide at the end of October 2011. It is estimated that there are another 10,000 heroin users who are not currently on methadone.
Methadone, once viewed as a way to wean a patient off opiates, has now become a fact of everyday life for many former heroin addicts. Each person accessing a methadone programme costs the State an average of €2,714.52 a year.
Heroin addiction has come to North Cork for the first time.
New figures from the Health Research Bureau show that there are now 15 people in North Cork receiving methadone treatment for heroin addiction where, seven years ago, there were none.
Every county in the country has recorded substantial increases in heroin treatment, ranging from a minimum of 20% to as high as 3,000%. Data from the Health Research Board shows a strong increase across all counties, with the biggest increase in Munster.
Latest data published today show levels of regular opioid use to be relatively stable in Europe But despite these indications, ‘the characteristics of Europe’s opioid problem are changing’, says the agency. Clients in treatment for opioid problems are older, fewer of them inject and there are reports of the use of opioids other than heroin in some parts of Europe. Also highlighted are developments in the heroin market and new concerns over the potential for HIV outbreaks among injectors, particularly in marginalised communities.
Warning: the film report above contains some very distressing images
Every city in every country has an issue with abusing one substance or another. But in most it is behind doors. In Afghanistan right now the problem is so vast, and spiralling further out of control every day, that the addicts are obvious to everyone.
Down by the Kabul River, even in a winter blizzard, you will see them there. Huddled in groups sometimes up to a hundred strong, crouching along the frozen riverbanks. Or under the arches of the bridges spanning this evil-smelling open-sewer, masquerading as a river.
Under one arch of a bridge Mohammad explains how he was deported from Iran back to Afghanistan and found himself in Kabul, without a job. Soon he was on the streets and smoking opium, then heroin, and here he is now, pupils dilated, filthy and half-frozen, crouching with perhaps twenty more addicts, desperate to get a hit from their makeshift pipes.
“Look at us, “he says, “this is no way to live, this is not an existence.”
Another addict staggers across and says:
“Everyone beats us – the police, the kids here, women, men from the neighbourhood – we get attacked all the time.”
They make another addict crouched close by and inhaling deeply on his pipe sit up so we can see his face. His right eye is closed, swollen from a beating. His right ear swollen and bloody. They say it was the police – but it could have been any of the above named groups.
A repor into an anthrax outbreak which killed 14 heroin addicts suggests officials should consider prescribing the drug during any future contaminations.
The National Anthrax Outbreak Control Team (NAOCT) claims the Scottish Government could “usefully give this aspect further consideration” as guidance on the issue would be helpful for Outbreak Control Teams (OCTs) and addiction services.
Report author Dr Colin Ramsay, chairman of NAOCT, said prescribing heroin was suggested as a control strategy during the year-long outbreak – which began in Glasgow in December 2009 – but NAOCT considered the suggestion to be outwith its remit.
