Upcoming Events

National | Miscellaneous

no events match your query!

New Events

National

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.? We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).?

offsite link What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

offsite link Moveable Feast Cafe 2023/02/27 ? Open Thread Mon Feb 27, 2023 19:00 | cafe-uploader
2023/02/27 19:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of

offsite link The stage is set for Hybrid World War III Mon Feb 27, 2023 15:50 | The Saker
Pepe Escobar for the Saker blog A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you?re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by

The Saker >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link The Daily Sceptic Christmas Appeal Mon Dec 23, 2024 07:00 | Toby Young
The Daily Sceptic's Christmas Appeal launches today ? an opportunity for readers to show their appreciation of the work we do. Remember, donating just ?5/month or ?50/year will give you access to a range of premium perks.
The post The Daily Sceptic Christmas Appeal appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Mon Dec 23, 2024 01:12 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Staff at ?100 Million Alan Turing Institute Attack ?Chaotic? Management Amid Diversity Row Sun Dec 22, 2024 19:00 | Richard Eldred
Staff at the ?100 million Alan Turing Institute have erupted in protest over a diversity row, accusing leadership of "tokenistic" hiring and sparking fears that the organisation's credibility is at risk.
The post Staff at ?100 Million Alan Turing Institute Attack ?Chaotic? Management Amid Diversity Row appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link ?Our Irish Leaders Have Contributed to Hatred Against Jews? Sun Dec 22, 2024 17:00 | Richard Eldred
Ireland's Chief Rabbi has blasted the country's leaders for fuelling antisemitism, leaving Jewish children hiding their identities and many others afraid to wear symbols of their faith.
The post ?Our Irish Leaders Have Contributed to Hatred Against Jews? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link ?Grocery Tax? to Hike Britons? Shopping Bills by ?56 in Labour Net Zero ?Inflation Boost? Sun Dec 22, 2024 15:00 | Richard Eldred
Labour's "grocery tax" is set to punish British families, slapping an extra ?56 onto their shopping bills and driving up inflation, all in the name of Net Zero.
The post ?Grocery Tax? to Hike Britons? Shopping Bills by ?56 in Labour Net Zero ?Inflation Boost? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?113 Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:42 | en

offsite link Pentagon could create a second Kurdish state Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:31 | en

offsite link How Washington and Ankara Changed the Regime in Damascus , by Thierry Meyssan Tue Dec 17, 2024 06:58 | en

offsite link Statement by President Bashar al-Assad on the Circumstances Leading to his Depar... Mon Dec 16, 2024 13:26 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?112 Fri Dec 13, 2024 15:34 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Heroin epidemic gripping Ireland, say youth groups

category national | miscellaneous | other press author Friday September 09, 2011 14:45author by MediaMega Report this post to the editors

Irish Examiner: Friday, September 09, 2011

IRELAND is in the grip of a "heroin epidemic", while alcohol abuse among the young is leading them towards drug use, two youth support organisations warned yesterday.

The Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children were told by Spunout and the Aislinn Adolescent Addiction Centre that alcohol was both a gateway and relapse drug and that issues such as the availability of alcohol and its below-cost selling needed to be tackled as a matter of urgency.

Both groups also told the committee they had suffered funding cutbacks and were struggling to maintain services.

Breda Cahill, general manager of the Aislinn Centre, which provides treatment for adolescent drug users from its Ballyragget location in Co Kilkenny, said staff had noticed four crucial changes since it opened its doors in 1998.

"It has become the norm for adolescents to drink and take drugs and go beyond experimentation," she said.

Ms Cahill said alcohol was still the main drug abused by adolescents and the main drug of relapse.

"As a society we are unable to stop the flow of drugs and underage drinking."

She also noted a rise in the prevalence of suicide among adolescent drug users, versus the lack of stepdown facilities.

Ruairi McKiernan, chief executive of Spunout, said 50% of young people surveyed on the group’s website believed the future was bleak.

He said following a move from Galway to Temple Bar in Dublin, staff at Spunout regularly witnessed up to eight people at a time taking heroin on a nearby street.

"Ireland is actively in the midst of a very, very serious heroin epidemic," he said.

He also pointed to the growth in the number of off-licences in recent years while services for young people were being cut. He said changes on alcohol policy needed "political will and political courage".

Fine Gael TD Denis Naughten said there had been "doublespeak from the state on the whole position of alcohol", while people were still able to purchase cannabis seeds online and have them delivered to Irish addresses.

He said one website was even offering free seeds to people in Ireland making an order.

Mr McKiernan said that Spunout’s HSE funding had been cut from 30% to 20% of its budget, while Breda Cahill said the level of state funding Aislinn received would not cover the growing demand for services at a time when there were gaps in the mental health system for those aged 13 to 18 and no stepdown facilities.

She said its HSE funding had also been cut, meaning the Aislinn Centre was trying to plan for the delivery of its family support service on the same level of income it has had for the past two years.

Mr McKiernan said that some major philanthropical organisations, which had been "propping up" certain services were now "exiting stage left", causing anxiety for those people involved.

http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/heroin-epidemic-gripping....html

Related Link: http://www.spunout.ie
author by Tpublication date Sat Sep 10, 2011 12:41author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Denis Naughten's statement about seeds is just a distraction. The real problem is the underlying social deprivation and the destruction of all the social nets which is undergoing even further greater destruction by the international financial elite through their agencies of the ECB/IMF and thence the government.

A good start could be made on the alcohol problem by making it a bit harder to get it and not making it so cheap. Every Centra, Spar, and larger supermarket around the country has tonnes of the stuff going at remarkly cheap prices 7 days a week the moment you step into the store. A few years back the FF govt made a token gesture by mandating earlier closing hours for off-licenses which was a joke because any teenager on Fri/Sat night would have been down at the local supermarket much earlier in the day getting their supplies for the evening.

The other real problem is the glorification of alcohol in Ireland and places like the UK too. Drinking alcohol in excess is all related to your peers around you and certain expectations. Our society is so shallow and lacking any sense of cohesion, coherent national debate that really it is not surprising. Of course this is not a new thing. Even a century ago, we had a reputation of the drunken Paddy and one would imagine that back then it was a poverty issue.

The drug problem then would seem to be a natural extension of our underlying alcohol problem and whatever are the drivers of that.

Whatever the cause there is one effect of this. Drugs have completely destroyed certain communities usually those that were already the poorest and in a sense should be the very places where strong resistance and challenges ought to be made against the ruling order. But in such smashed places, it is very difficult for organised resistance or even critical mass of alternative ways of organising society, to arise. And this suits there prevaliling political elite to a tee. It is the same the world over where devasted poor urban areas are blighted by drugs and other forms of abuse.

There is probably no easy answer because ultimately the drug and alcohol blight strengths the grip on power through this smash and divide mechanism and so there is no real reason why anything other than token PR efforts are made by the body politic itself.

author by Cautiouspublication date Sun Sep 11, 2011 09:30author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"the drug and alcohol blight" by T at Sat Sep 10, 2011 12:41

Alcohol is, always has been, and always will be, a mind-altering drug.

Just because booze happens to be legal in this part of the world, does not in any way alter the "mind-altering drug" reality, or justify a separate classification which insidiously implies that it is somehow NOT a mind-altering drug.

Neither does it alter the fact that alcohol has proved itself to be a highly addictive drug (physically and psychologically) for a significant percentage of those who start using it, and, that in one way and another (including car crashes and other forms of accidental death for example), it kills far more people every year than all the other mind-altering drugs combined: legal, prescribed, and illegal.

Very interestingly, there is no safety and health warnings for the user (or potential user) on any of these mind-altering booze products.

Ever wondered why that might be?

Clue: Ask yourself who benefits most from this very neat and insidious (and entirely avoidable!!) piece of destructive deception?

 
© 2001-2024 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy