HEROIN ON PRESCRIPTION AS ADDICTION SOLUTION URGED

The Government should consider new approaches to the drug problem,
including prescribing legal heroin, according to a member of the National
Drugs Strategy Team (NDST).

Father Seen Cassin, former head of the Merchants Quay project, told a Deil
Committee yesterday that a Swiss project prescribing heroin to addicts had
claimed "significantly good" results. The NDST is the statutory agency set
up to co-ordinate the work of local drugs task forces.

"We're not in favour of anybody using or injecting drugs," Father Cassin
told the Joint Committee on European Affairs. "But today some 10,000
injecting drug users are going to take heroin, they're going to inject it
and find or rob or steal the materials necessary to inject it."

The Swiss experiment involved around 1,100 heroin users over three years,
he said. "There was a significant reduction in the level of crime. One
third actually went into drug-free treatment and a further third went on to
maintenance programmes of oral alternatives to heroin."

Father Cassin said one criticism of the Swiss project had been that it had
picked those addicts more likely to succeed.

"We have a situation here in Dublin at the moment where the use of cannabis
is, in reality, decriminalised." If the i Garda pursued all cannabis users
then the system would be overwhelmed, he said. So a pragmatic approach was
taken in Dublin, where heroin was the main concern. Mr Fergus McCabe of the
NDST told the committee that the debate about such projects could "lead to
all kind of hysterical and irrational responses." "We can't have good
policies, rational or effective policies, unless we have information," he
said. There was an "urgent need" for a national drugs advisory board, he
said.

"In every other jurisdiction in Europe there is an advisory group or
council there." Ireland's drug policy had been the result of health policy
on the prevention of AIDS, he said. Mr Tony Gregory (Independent) said the
Swiss experience was that heroin crossed all social classes. Mr Gay
Mitchell (FG) criticised the Eastern Health Board for its response to the
problem. "Inchicore was devastated by people coming from all over the city
to one chemist to get their methadone."

Senator Brendan Ryan (Independent) said the Swiss police "had the peculiar
role of having to deliver heroin to the clinics," because of security
considerations. And a report, almost completed by members of the committee
would be about "neither liberal nor conservative solutions, but what has
been seen to work."

Father Cassin said politicians were afraid to decriminalise drugs.