NEW PRISON HEALTH REGIME NEEDED TO DEAL WITH DRUGS

Responsibility for monitoring health in the State's prisons should be
removed from the Department of Justice and taken over by the
Department of Health, a Dail committee was told last night.

Dr Joe Barry, medical adviser to the National Drugs Strategy Team,
said about half of the prison population was addicted to drugs and
about 80 per cent of those addicts were testing positive for
hepatitis C.

"Change in prison healthcare is urgently needed and there is a great
argument for giving responsibility to the Department of Health and
Children rather than the Department of Justice. I think we are
storing up big problems the way we are dealing with this."

Dr Barry was speaking during a hearing by the Joint Committee on
European Affairs into a draft report titled "Social Consequences of,
and Responses to, Drug Misuse in Member-States".

The author of the report, Dr Paul Flynn, of the Social, Health and
Family Affairs Committee, told the Dail committee his research
indicated that countries with strict prohibition policies towards
drugs had encountered greater problems than those countries with
liberal regimes.

He said that the UK had some of the highest cannabis use, and
greatest increases in addiction and drug deaths, while pursuing
"prohibition" policies with the strictest penalties in Europe. By
contrast, the Netherlands, which had 25 years of regulating demand,
had "spectacularly impressive results" in controlling the safe use of
drugs.

There were 40 deaths from heroin per million of population in the UK
compared with less than four per million of population in the
Netherlands.

Mr Tony Geoghegan, of the Merchants Quay Project in Dublin, told the
committee that there were an estimated 13,000 heroin addicts in
Dublin, but only 5,000 were engaged in treatment. The Republic's drug
addicts have the lowest age profile in the EU with an average age of
24. On average, young heroin users in Dublin do not seek treatment
until they have been addicted for 21/2 years.

Mr Geoghegan said there were 86 drug-related deaths in Dublin last
year, 16 more than in 1998. He challenged the notion that cannabis
was a "gateway" to harder drugs. In his experience, social
deprivation was the main gateway to drug addiction.