HEROIN REMAINS HARDEST HABIT TO BREAK

The authorities and local communities are starting to get a grip on heroin.
But there is a long way to go. Catherine Cleary reports

A young woman stands talking to two other women. She holds something white
in her hand and then proceeds to tear it open with her teeth. She hands a
tiny plastic pack, the size of a fingernail, to one of the women and puts
another into her mouth. Then she reties the package, lifts her jacket and
sticks her hand down the front of her loose jeans, smiling and talking as
she does so. One of the two women hands her money and she slips it into her
pocket.

The transaction takes less than two minutes. The dealer crosses the road
into a supermarket and meets another woman, wheeling a baby in a buggy. She
has one £20 deal in her mouth and the remainder of the batch inside her. If
she is stopped she can swallow the deal and refuse an internal examination.

Despite Operation Dochas with its increased Garda street presence, community
drug watches and the efforts of the health board and Dublin Corporation,
heroin is still sold openly in parts of Dublin. The deal described above was
caught on camera shortly after 10 p.m. in an area on the north side of the
city late last year.

Over the next four days we will look at where the last two years of
concerted action against drugs by gardai, politicians and communities has
brought us.

Heroin is cheaper now than it was five years ago. A deal that once cost £40
can now be bought for £20, and some for as little as £10. The drug is cheap
enough to smoke, making it more appealing to first-time users. According to
one drug addict, injecting was the more cost-effective way of getting every
grain into your system when heroin was expensive.

The ecstasy scene has led to more people being introduced to heroin-smoking,
with dealers selling "party packs" of ecstasy and heroin, one to bring you
up and the other to bring you down.

The latest figures on heroin use from the Health Research Board show that
the percentage of those presenting for heroin abuse doubled between 1990 and
1996. Intravenous drug use is becoming less common, while smoking it is on
the increase.

Independent TD Tony Gregory has a theory about the heroin epidemic. It was
ignored for years, he says, because drug-dealing was the lesser of two
evils. Criminals like the Dunne family started their careers with armed
robberies. In the early 1980s, political pressure was applied by the banks,
the Garda responded and the shutters were pulled down.

The criminals moved into the easier option of drug-dealing, and a generation
that might have been marching on the Dail demanding better housing,
education and jobs became junkies, fixated on their next turn-on.

Senior gardai agree privately that the approach to drugs in the past was
under-resourced and incompetent. Things changed with the murder of
journalist Veronica Guerin in June 1996.

International co-operation, unprecedented powers of assets seizure and a
more sophisticated approach to tackling the problem have all had an effect.
But the heroin problem is one that will take more than policing measures.

The latest catch-phrase is "multi-agency approach". The Minister for
Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, is promising "zero tolerance on crime and on the
causes of crime".

The latest idea of drug courts, another US import into Government policy, is
a dramatic rethink of the criminal justice system. In parts of the US the
system of community courts has introduced domestic violence courts,
driving-under-the-influence courts and even "deadbeat dad" courts.

The resources needed to channel non-violent drug offenders into treatment
rather than prison require more than just a tinkering with the courts list
and a new title for a District Court judge.

Unless real training and rehabilitation centres are built into the system,
drug courts could become just another roundabout, ridden by an addict until
he or she falls off into the prison system. The success rate of
detoxification is poor when the addicts return to the same environment after
coming off heroin.

There are already 400 users waiting for treatment by the Eastern Health
Board, and the real waiting list is probably much higher. The health board
needs to open 25 more centres, in addition to the existing 28, to deal with
the current waiting list. These will probably involve 25 more disputes with
residents who do not want a "junkie centre" in their back yard.

Meanwhile, the dealing goes on.