the DRUGS debate DUBLIN COMMUNITIES ORGANISE The heroin epidemic in Dublin is causing major problems for addicts and for the communities where they live. Oddly enough you would not get any inkling of this crisis from the bourgeois press. That is because the epidemic and its effects are confined to the inner city and the working class suburbs like Ballymun, Tallaght, Clondalkin and Blanchardstown. The politicians and the powers that be don't give a damn about the people who live in these communities or about the problems they face. So, starting last summer, these communities began to organise their own response to the drugs crisis. ICON, the Inner City Organisations Network, based on the northside, took an initiative. It started a series of meetings, open to the community, in the North Star Hotel to discuss ways to tackle the problem. These meetings were well attended by local people who talked about their experiences with sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and partners who are addicts and who can't get on to the treatment programmes because the waiting lists are so long. There are now upwards of five hundred addicts waiting to get on methadone treatment programmes in Dublin. Some of these are in their early teens. Some are very sick with the HIV virus and even Aids. Yet the main response of the government announced in the summer was a law and order one concentrated on security and policing. These kinds of responses have been tried in practically every country experiencing the same drugs crisis without success. ICON soon saw the need to spread out the campaign to other communities. A series of city wide meetings were held in Liberty Hall which were attended by people from the Liberties, Blanchardstown, Tallaght, Ballymun and other areas. A series of demands were drawn up and sub-groups set up to deal with the different aspects of the problem. A big increase in the availability of treatment for addicts both in locally based clinics, under community control, and from local G.Ps are central demands. Other issues are the lack of methadone maintenance programmes in the prisons, the lack of success by the police in catching the big dealers, and the desperate social and economic conditions in the communities which cause the drug addiction in the first place. Unlike the community response in the 1980s, there has been little enthusiasm for a return to the tactics of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs. CPAD had taken a direct action approach to dealers and those suspected of dealing, and forced them out of the communities. Although some people within the campaign do still favour this approach, most don't because of the totally changed situation on the ground now. Now most families involved in the campaign have a close relative who is an addict, they may even have a close relative who has died at a young age from a drug related illness. Many addicts are also small time dealers in order to support their habit. The drug problem is so closely intertwined with the fabric of the community now ,especially in the inner city areas, that it is no longer possible or desirable to adopt the tactics of CPAD because people would be targeting members of their own families. Another reason is that there is now a clearer realisation that there is nothing to be gained by just pushing the problem and the addicts from one area to another. There are other issues to be tackled too, such as the fact that methadone itself is highly addictive and some experts argue that it is better to prescribe heroin. The whole issue of legalisation and decriminalisation of hard and soft drugs is also up for debate. Resistance from communities to drug treatment clinics in their areas also has to be tackled head on. On the other hand there are examples from Tallaght of working class communities getting together to set up their own treatment programmes with the support of one or two G.Ps when the Eastern Health Board refused to deal with the problem. The reluctance of G.Ps to treat addicts is basically a financial one. If the Dept. of Health would agree to pay them more to treat addicts, many more would willingly do so. Strangely enough this is exactly the same line of argument they use about treating Travellers! The state is not putting in the resources to tackle the problem in any effective way. Their response is primarily a policing one. As long as the heroin problem stays in the working class communities - where it creates havoc with people lives - the state will not bother to respond in a serious manner unless it is forced to do so. This is what the ICON led campaign has been set up to do. It has the direct support and involvement of local people from working class communities and is democratically run. It remains to be seen if it can be effective against the indifference and self-interest of the ruling class. Patricia McCarthy "Direct Action Against Drugs" Murder and Thuggery MEN SHOT DEAD, many more beaten up. Attacks in Armagh, Belfast, Derry, Dublin, Dundalk and Kerry. In most cases the reason given was that the people being punished were ecstasy dealers. The murders in the six counties were claimed by Direct Action Against Drugs. This organisation does not exist in any real sense, it is widely believed to be nothing more than a cover name for the IRA. That is why the Sinn Fein "does not condone" the killings but "will not condemn" them either. Ecstasy use, like using any drug , is not to be encouraged. It is dangerous. But there has been a lot of nonsense talked about 'E'. It is a lot less likely to kill regular users than tobacco. Just as many smoked dope in the 1970s, the 1990s generation takes ecstasy. When asked by the 'Sunday Tribune' (January 7th) why the IRA was not doing anything about tobacco or alcohol abuse Noel Sheridan, a Sinn Fein councillor in Armagh, replied that they were "not illegal". So now you know, republicans' primary concern is for upholding the law! The biggest - though not the only - risks come from cutting the drug with dangerous substances, from there being no way of knowing the strength of an illegal drug, and from club owners turning off taps to force dehydrated dancers to buy bottled water. So why did the IRA start to kill alleged ecstasy dealer when they didn't kill heroin bosses like Larry Dunne and Ma Baker a decade ago? The IRA may have a concern that overconfident criminals might eventually start dealing in hard drugs, or that "criminal gangs will dominate working class communities" ('AP/RN' editorial, January 11th). More likely is that it was a way of demonstrating, to the Mitchell Commission and the British government, that an armed campaign can be resumed; that the IRA has not gone away. By targeting alleged drug dealers at a time of great concern and a lot of media hype about drug abuse there was far less chance of a public outcry. More importantly, they can not be accused of breaking the ceasefire as they are not shooting RUC or soldiers. The campaign of murders and beatings is authoritarian thuggery. The IRA/DADD have no mandate to make the rules about drug use and abuse. They certainly have no right to set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner. What would the IRA's reaction be if the RUC went around executing alleged drug dealers? Or have they already forgotten all they used to say about torture, non-jury courts and shoot-to-kill? Editorial Collective the DRUGS debate bans or legalisation SINCE THE DAYS of Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD), the growth of the heroin problem in inner-city Dublin has largely gone without comment. In the last few months, two factors have pushed it back into the spotlight - the government's declaration of a 'War on Drugs', and the emergence of the city-wide campaign against heroin which has been set up by Inner City Organisations Network. In this article, we look at these campaigns, and how we, as anarchists, would deal with the problem of drug-abuse. Not War, But Containment It's not a coincidence that the heroin problem is concentrated in communities with the highest rates of unemployment, worst housing, etc. The inner-cities have been written-off already, it doesn't make political sense to spend money on people who are poor, unemployed, and probably don't vote anyway. Besides which, everyone knows that as long as these areas remain run-down unemployment black-spots, people are going to keep turning to drugs, if only because there's nothing else to turn to. Instead, the government is concentrating on soft drugs, cannabis and Ecstasy mainly, because these are the drugs which have broken out of the ghetto. Even the most paranoid suburban parent is unlikely to think that their teenage son or daughter is developing a smack habit, it's much easier to picture them smoking a joint or taking an E at a rave. These parents are the swing voters, the people that political parties must win over to get elected, so they are the ones at whom the publicity campaign must be targeted. The proof of this is in the number of customs seizures of heroin as opposed to those of hash or E. Easy Targets There are few, if any, grounds for criminalising cannabis. Countless studies have shown it to be a drug that is not addictive and has next to no adverse physical effects, especially compared to alcohol and nicotine, Ireland's drugs of choice. Ecstasy, though dangerous in large quantities (as with most drugs, legal or illegal), is safe at its normal dosage provided basic guidelines are followed1, drinking enough water if dancing, etc. The two main health risks associated with using Ecstasy are of allergic reaction - a small percentage of people can be killed by a bee sting, a similar number of people may have an equally dangerous reaction to E - and the fact that not everything sold as Ecstasy is in fact MDMA. Lack of testing facilities means that people are at risk from unscrupulous dealers. Because neither of these drugs is addictive, it is (relatively) easy to control their usage. Heroin is a different matter. The physical craving for heroin, and the side-effects of withdrawal, prove unbearable for many, and ensure that there is a steady demand, even if the price is driven up by raids or seizures at customs. It requires a lot of resources to deal with the problem of heroin in any meaningful way. Needle exchanges are essential to stop the spread of disease through dirty needles. Helping someone get off heroin means supplying them with other drugs to lessen the withdrawal symptoms, providing them with support facilities so that they do actually clean up rather than just develop another addiction, and finally, making sure that there is an alternative waiting for them so that they don't get hooked again six months after detoxing. Anti-Social Drugs The absence of this support means that heroin is likely to remain a problem in Dublin for some time. But it is important to realise exactly what the problem is. Too often, analysis goes no further than 'Drugs are bad, heroin is a drug, therefore heroin is bad'. Given that most of the people reading this article will have used some illegal drug - acid, E, speed, almost certainly cannabis - this is hardly a very credible argument. The difference with heroin (the most common 'hard' drug in Ireland) is that it is highly addictive. Smack is an expensive habit, and since most drug users (like most smokers, heavy drinkers, and Lottery 'players') come from poor backgrounds, they have to turn to crime. Addiction to something as demanding as heroin means that most users cannot afford a sense of social responsibility. This is the destructive side of drugs, this is why it is not mere moralism to describe heroin as a problem. When so much of crime is related to a particular drug, that drug is obviously a problem. Solutions? So what can we do? The first step is to stop treating drugs as one undifferentiated mass, and to distinguish between those that are physically dangerous and those that are not, between those that are addictive and those that are not. If we allow people to smoke cigarettes, why not allow people equal access to other recreational drugs, perhaps with the same age restrictions as apply to alcohol consumption. Legalisation would allow regulation, which in turn allows testing, so that people won't be poisoned by dealers ripping them off. For more serious drugs, there are a number of options. At the very least, the current type of support programme needs to be properly funded. More sensible approaches could also be tried. For example, a doctor in England used to supply all of his addicted patients with medical heroin, which was both safer for them, as it removed the risks involved with using heroin available on the street - often cut with other drugs and of varying strengths - and better for those around them, as it allowed them to live a relatively normal life. The fundamental question is of freedom. People must be free to do what they like with their own bodies, but the freedom of others must not be restricted. Where a drug effects only the user, like cannabis or LSD, there can be no excuse for preventing a mature adult from using it. If a drug effects others, like heroin, alcohol (indirectly responsible for how many road deaths and assaults per year?), or nicotine (cigarette smoke is bad for everyone who breathes it in, not just the smoker), then we can justify restricting its use to situations where bystanders are not harmed. In short, then, we call for the decriminalisation of drugs, to allow people to make up their own minds on what they will use, and to make the circumstances under which they make that choice as safe as possible. Ray Cunningham 1 Though there are very few studies on the effects of long-term usage.