HEROIN DEATHS LEAD TO STOP APPEAL

AN Irish minister responsible for drug control has appealed to heroin
addicts to come forward for treatment after Dublin lost 19 users to bad
heroin over the last six weeks.

The heroin deaths sweeping the city are being blamed on 'bad gear' imported
by a south-Dublin based drug dealer who bought part of a consignment of
heroin that has also caused a series of deaths in Glasgow.

Minister for State at the Department of Health, Eoin Ryan appealed to
heroin users to stop using the drug.

"We've got to send a clear message to people out there that if they come
forward there's treatment for them and that treatment, through methadone
maintenance programmes, does work.

"An independent assessment of that treatment, which has increased greatly
over the past number of years - we have 4,600 people under the treatment
now - shows that 70% of the people on the treatment are no longer using
heroin, 40% of them are back to work, and by international standards that's
very, very high."

But the treatment figures are dwarfed even by the Government's own
calculation that there are over 13,000 heroin users in the greater Dublin
area. Drug treatment experts put the figure higher, at close to 20,000, and
spreading nationwide.

Attempts to introduce locally based treatment and drop-in clinics are being
opposed by residents groups.

The Minister said he was not complacent. "Now I'm not saying that
everything is perfect, it's not", he said. "We need to make sure that
everybody who presents for treatment gets treatment."