Dublin's Lord Mayor Christy Burke has said that the drugs problem in Dublin is worse now than it was during the heroin epidemic thirty years ago.
During the 1980s, Burke was a prominent member of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement.
"It was heroin in my day, today it’s prescribed pills, cocaine, benzos, hash, dalmane, librium, valium: it’s a whole cocktail."
Burke said authorities are not adequately dealing with the issue, and has called for more residential beds and treatment centres for addicts.
He said that 300 people died from heroin in his constituency at the height of the epidemic, adding that the current anti-drugs model in the capital only “scratches the surface”.
Burke said addicts leave centres in the afternoon with nowhere to go and are offered drugs that evening.
“It’s very hard to say ‘no’ when you’re vulnerable to addiction.”
He told TheJournal.ie it was extremely hypocritical that some people want the methadone centres to help addicts, but not in their own area.
"I don’t buy into that, honest to God, I really don’t buy into any of that type of crap to be honest with you. Because that type of behaviour happened in Amiens Street in 1985 when a methadone clinic was introduced and there were people opposing it. Some of them ended up in it and some of their sons and daughters were on [heroin]. So where do you put it?
Everyone with an addiction has the right to recovery. Nobody woke up one morning and said: ‘I’m going to become a heroin addict or a cocaine addict, so bring it on.’ … Do they object to pubs in their area? No. So the myth that’s out there that methadone [clinics] shouldn’t be there is hypocrisry of the highest level."
Source: Órla Ryan, thejournal, 29/01/15