'WE MUST DISTINGUISH BETWEEN DRUG USE AND MISUSE'

SOCIETY needs to make a distinction between drug use and drug misuse
and should consider the legal supply of drugs.

This call was made by veteran homelessness campaigner Fr Peter
McVerry in a speech at a conference on drugs last night.

Fr McVerry said adults should take a "long and critical" look at
their own drug use, namely alcohol and prescription drugs, such as valium.

"It is hypocritical to expect our young people to stay away from
drugs, when we adults won't," he told the conference, organised by
the Addiction Training Institute.

He said adults had fostered a culture of consumerism and
individualism, which did not value young people for what they were
and destroyed their sense of community. The Jesuit priest, who has
worked with homeless young people for 30 years, said he had seen the
"devastation" caused by illegal drugs, particularly heroin and cocaine.

"I spend much of my time helping young people to come off drugs. As a
priest, I bury, on average, one young person a month who has died
from a drug overdose, some of whom I would have been very close to."

But he said there was a massive difference between drug user per se
and drug misuse.

"I do it along the lines of alcohol. Many people use alcohol but it
doesn't have any dire consequence for themselves or for anybody else
and people can use drugs without it having any dire consequences for
themselves or anyone else, whereas the misuse of drugs is where drugs
have consequences for oneself, one's family or one's community."

He said 98% of those who experiment with drugs do not go on to misuse them.

"If you want to find out why young people take drugs, go into any pub
any night of the week and ask the adults why they take alcohol. The
reasons are the same. Adults would say we take alcohol in order to
relax, as a focus for socialising, in order to escape from the
pressures of life and to alter our moods. We take alcohol because we
enjoy it. Young people take drugs for exactly the same reasons."

He said Ireland's response to illegal drugs has been a predominantly
criminal justice approach, which he was "particularly inappropriate"
for drug users, who should be helped by way of prevention and education.

He said criminal justice responses should be secondary in dealing
with drug misusers, who should be first helped from a social and
medical point of view.

Fr McVerry said public discussion of drugs was dominated by either a
climate of fear or a moral climate.

"It would appear to me that the legalisation of drugs must be, at the
very least, on our list of policy options to be discussed. If we
accept that drugs are here to stay, as I think we must, then our
priority ought to be 'controlling the supply of drugs'."

He said legalising drugs in the model of alcohol would be a "total
disaster" and that their supply would have to be tightly controlled.

"We often forget - or are unaware - that we have already legalised
one drug, methadone. Methadone is a highly dangerous drug and even
more addictive than heroin."

He said he appreciated that legalising, or controlling the supply of
drugs, was politically unrealistic.