A new European-wide drug report highlights the need for a supervised injecting facility in Ireland, according to Junior Health Minister Catherine Byrne.
In February, the Health Service Executive (HSE) announced that the homeless charity Merchants Quay Ireland (MQI) will run the country’s first medically supervised injecting facility from its base in Dublin city centre.
On June 7, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said that supervised injecting facilities helped, “reduce overdose mortality and transmission of infections, as well as increased drug users’ access to treatment and other health and social services.”
The EMCDDA’s European drug report 2018 — which provides a snapshot of the latest drug trends across the 28 EU member states, as well as Norway and Turkey — also revealed that in 2015, 82 deaths in Ireland were linked to heroin use.
Commenting on the report, the Minister for State for Health Promotion and the National Drugs Strategy, said: “The high number of drug-related poisoning deaths every year (350 people in 2015) greatly concerns me and we want to reduce this number.
“One public health measure to specifically address heroin-related deaths (82 in 2015) is the establishment of a pilot supervised injecting facility in Dublin city centre in 2018.”
The report also said that there was a growing body of evidence in favour of “supervised drug consumption facilities”, adding: “At the same time, they can help to reduce drug use in public and improve public amenity in areas surrounding urban drug markets.”
The report also revealed that the number of people aged 15-64 in Ireland reporting that they used illicit drugs in their lifetime increased from two in 10 in 2002/3 to three in 10 in 2014/15.
Source: Peter Doyle, 22/06/18
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