Maintaining drug users on the heroin-replacement drug methadone is a form of State-sponsored social control that substitutes one addictive opiate drug for another, the head of one of Dublin’s biggest drug-free rehabilitation projects has said.
Irene Crawley, director of the Hope project based in the north inner city, said some addicts had been on the methadone treatment programme for 20 years.
“The irony is methadone is an opiate like heroin and you’re addicted to it,” she said.
“It is just as hard, if not harder, to come off it as it is heroin. It was only ever intended for short-term use – to detox people and get them stable.”
She said if methadone were used in that way, those in treatment “would not appear stoned” and would become stable and be in a position to work and re-engage with their lives.
“But the problem, in my experience, is that people are going and getting methadone in clinics but they’re also taking other drugs. Especially tablets; benzos. The streets are awash with benzos, zimmovane.”
She said a negative street culture had grown up around the HSE-run clinics, where methadone was dispensed daily to drug users registered with the State’s methadone treatment programme, or protocol. “For someone who wants to get clean, it’s very difficult. They’re going down to the clinics, congregating there. They’re bringing their children in prams, they’re selling tablets.”
The Garda conducts frequent operations, especially along the boardwalk on the north side of the river Liffey, to prevent drug deals and the bartering of drugs.
Negative cycle
However, Ms Crawley said it was inevitable that people would become trapped in a negative cycle if prescribed a heavy, heroin-like drug long-term by the State for the full span of their adult lives.
“It’s basically saying ‘you will go this far, but no further; this is all you are capable of’. It’s telling people ‘there is something deficient in you, you are not capable of living a normal life like the rest of us, you have to stay medicated’.”
Source: Conor Lally, Irish Times, 21/10/13
Safer Student Nights
eBulletin
Poll
