Community Response

I have recently completed a proposal for a community response to the drug problem and thought it would be worth posting to give some sense of where it is that some of the answers may lie to the problems highlighted so far. Over the years I have heard many people give out about the current situation but offer no real alternative, I do not claim to have the answers but perhaps there is a way that together we could find them. have a read of the proposal below and think about it relation to your own community and the response to the drug crisis. 


Proposal

Given the current economic situation in this country, with wide ranging austerity measures we are witnessing the dismantling of the community sector, projects are being closed and amalgamated and yet the problem of drugs which they were established to address continues to flourish.  Over successive years now the problem of drug abuse has been individualised and medicised, with most of the focus for activity being placed on individual service delivery, provided by large organisations and funded community projects. Little or no attention has been paid to the more sociological aspect of drug abuse in this country, the fact that it is concentrated in very specific communities and that these tend to be urban and working class. The individual medical model has meant that little has been done to address the underlying issues in these communities which make them a breeding ground for hard drug use. As we see the melt down of our economy and the subsequent drying up of funds available to these structures there has never been a better time for change, there is an opportunity to take back some control of the issue of drugs at a community level where the problem exists.  An opportunity to be a real voice for social change, for equality, after all as the system fails and our economy crashes is it not obvious now that the old way does not work.

The response to date by successive governments has been to expand the service delivery model and to continue to professionalise the drug sector. Whist I as a so called professional recognise the need for people who are skilled and trained in service delivery, I am also baffled by the head in the sand approach that has been taken to looking at the causal factors of addiction in our communities.  It does not take a genius or indeed even a sociologist to recognize that the drug problem, particularly Heroin is concentrated in very specific communities and that these have similar characteristics. What this means in very simple terms is that we have over the years treated the problem of addiction but never really addressed the causes. It is the classic chicken and egg scenario, we have continued to try and fix the broken eggs in the hope that someday the chicken will stop producing them. Heroin will never go away, it is here to stay but perhaps where we to look at what it is that is causing such huge numbers of our young people, in very specific communities, to use Heroin and other hard drugs, then we could being to stem the flow of new people into addiction, instead of just offering them treatment once they get there

The focus of this group I believe should be two fold, firstly we need to recognise the social aspect of drug use in Ireland, in recognizing that hard drug use is concentrated in communities like our own with very specific sets of social challenges and problems we then will have the chance to become a voice that calls for social change. It is no coincidence that Heroin and more recently crack cocaine flourish in neighbourhoods which experience, high un-employment, poor social housing, low educational achievement, high levels of abuse, histories of high levels of alcoholism and high crime rates. The very first person to investigate the first wave of heroin that struck this country, Dr John Brabshaw recognized this link, between social in-equality and drug use and yet nearly thirty years later not only has little been done to address the problem but the link between in-equality and drug use has been swept under the carpet again and again. Our government has a prevention pillar in the national drug strategy that fails to recognise the simple fact that if you want to prevent drugs then offer people opportunity, offer them equality, education, employment and a decent standard of living. If we are serious about tackling the drug issue in our community then we really need to recognize what is wrong in our community and become a voice that calls for change. If we continue to wait for our government to recognize and address these structural elements, then I contend that the wait will be a long one. So part of the work of this new group will be in advocacy, a voice for social change, for equality. If it is the system that is flawed, then the best time for change is surely during systemic melt down. Look around you what you see in Ireland today is the collapse of the current way of doing things, the time has never been better to find a new way, to recognize what is wrong with the old way and call for change.

There will I believe be a need to balance this type of advocacy work with the more practical issue of dealing with the drug issue on the ground. To date we have been sold a very specific model of delivering services to drug users which has been delivered by a professionalised drug service industry. As the money dries up we are already seeing the withdrawing of funds to this sector and a short fall in service delivery. For example during boom times there where a total of twenty seven detoxification beds available to upwards of 15,000 registered Heroin users, bear in mind this was the period when funds where available to these services. Now try to picture the future, as spending is cut to health, education and welfare can you imagine what will happen to drug services. Imagine what a government who was willing to provide only twenty seven beds in boom time will be willing to do as things continue to get worse. The future for this problem is not bright, it may well be that very soon we do not just have to think about new ways forward but we will need to find them. I believe that the answers to these question lie within the communities who are worst affected by the problems.

There is a vast amount of experience in all our communities when it comes to dealing with drugs, experience that has been overlooked and pushed aside by the professionalization of drug services. These services are now finding themselves in trouble, as the money runs out and services continue to close, where I ask will this leave the communities who depend on them to help their young people. Is it not possible that we, given the years of experience of drugs as a community, within our families, our homes, our schools and our localities could find some of the solutions to these problems? Local solutions, to local problems. There really has never been a better time for communities to unite and take a real look at what can be done to tackle the issue of hard drug use.