Social justice campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has called for an increase in funding for family support services in disadvantaged areas to reduce the risk of teenagers taking drugs.
He also called for the coordination of relevant departments and services and for action to be taken to reduce addiction in prisons.
He told the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs that the State’s approach over the 40 years that he has worked in the area wasn’t working and that “billions of euro” had been spent primarily on the criminal justice system.
“The outcome is a wide variety of drugs available in every village,” he said. “We need to treat it as a health problem, not a justice problem.
“We can reduce drug use but we need to do things differently. The issue is, is the political will there?” He said he was very frustrated at the political response.
He said drug use was a “far greater threat” to the State than the IRA ever was.
He said gangs were terrorizing local areas, with dealers “smashing up homes and destroying communities”.
The assembly, comprised of 99 members of the public, held its fifth and penultimate meeting this weekend, with a focus on prevention.
Fr McVerry said there were only ten stabilization beds in Dublin’s north inner city but said there needed to be 100 if the State seriously wanted to make a dent.
He said his charity had five treatment centres but that people were waiting four or five months to get in, which, he said, was too long.
He said many parts of the country had no treatment services.
Fr McVerry said family support services in deprived areas are “often non-existent” or have suffered cut backs.
He said that if the assembly could get statutory bodies to work together, they’d “get the Nobel Peace Prize”.
He said the “big problem” was in deprived communities but said most politicians don’t live in those areas and were “distanced from the reality of drug use”.
He said that one of the national drug strategies from around 15 years ago said no one should wait more than four weeks after assessment for drug treatment to receiving it – and that should now be set again.
