Equality and Social Justice

There is a need to strike a balance in writing this blog between and academics and social commentary, one it seems is pointless without the other. To simply turn around and pronounce that we live in a sick society that is driven by inequality and social injustice and not be able to qualify those statements seems a waste of time. On the other hand there is the fear that the moral message of this blog gets lost in a litany of academia, that a whole audience gets isolated and switched off by windy academic arguments and examination. It is with this in mind that I will attempt to strike balance between the two, to find some middle ground. 


Heroin has been a part of Irish society now for nearly thirty years now, since its emergence in 1979, it has regularly featured in the media, social policy, academic research, criminal justice and political debate. In spite of all this attention from some of the most finely tuned minds of our small country, Heroin continues to ravage working class communities. In fact whilst there has been a leveling off of Heroin use in the greater Dublin area, a fact our Government is oh so proud of, Heroin has steadily migrated to urban communities outside of Dublin. In order to really understand this phenomena, to gain any real insight we need to look at the sociology of this problem, to see why it is we as a country have failed so miserably to tackle this issue.


So how then in simple terms is heroin an issue of social justice, is it just coincidence that the vast majority of heroin addicts come from working class backgrounds. Tend to grow up in the same urban housing estates and go to the same schools. My question is this, has it just become accepted that Heroin is a part of urban working class life, have we been so bombarded by the idea's of the state and their cronies that we are no longer willing to stand up and say enough is enough. They really want you to believe the main problem here lies with the individual, yes they will admit that society is not perfect, but heroin addiction they claim is primarily a medical/individual problem. 


My problem with this as a social researcher is a simple one, the numbers do not add up. If heroin is what they say then this problem would be dispersed in a very different way, it would range through the separate classes in a more equal spread, but it does not. Heroin is concentrated, so concentrated that it would take a fool not to recognize that a very distinct group of people (working class) produce by far the largest number of heroin addicts. The question then as a researcher is a simple one, what is it in these communities that makes it more likely you will become a heroin user?