The Ana Liffey Drug Project is an NGO based in Ireland. Our primary work is in delivering direct social and medical services to over 2,500 service users annually. We work within a harm reduction ethos, and seek to keep barriers to accessing our services as low as possible. Many of our service users experience multiple and complex issues in their lives, including problematic drug use. We work to support people who use our services to make healthier choices directed at limiting the harm drug use is causing them and those around them. Outside direct service delivery, we play a leading role nationally in advocating for policies which meet the needs of our clients. We also have an active online presence and manage the www.drugs.ie domain on behalf of the Health Service Executive.

L’Ana Liffey Drug Project est un service national de prise en charge des addictions fondé sur une approche « à bas seuil – réduction des risques ». Il fournit des services directs aux personnes qui consomment des drogues dans les régions de Dublin et du Midwest en Irlande, et joue également un rôle actif dans les politiques en matière de drogues, en plaidant pour des choix qui améliorent la vie des personnes utilisant ses services.

El Ana Liffey Drug Project es un servicio nacional de atención a las adicciones con una filosofía de «bajo umbral – reducción de daños», que ofrece servicios directos a las personas que usan drogas en las regiones de Dublín y del Medio Oeste de Irlanda. Además, desempeña un papel activo en las políticas de drogas, abogando por decisiones que mejoren la vida de las personas que utilizan sus servicios.

Ana Liffey Drug Project 

Pese a contar con apoyo público, político y legislativo, aún no han sido implementados estos muy necesarios servicios. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

By Tony Duffin and Eugene McCann / The Journal

IT HAS BEEN a decade since a supervised facility for people to inject drugs less harmfully was first proposed for Dublin.

It has been almost five years since Supervised Injecting Facilities have been legal in Ireland. It is time one was opened.

Street-based injecting refers to the practice of injecting drugs in public or semi-public places. Street-based injecting is harmful. There are harms affecting the people who are injecting and also harms that affect the community where injecting occurs.

"A Supervised Injecting Facility is a type of Drug Consumption Room. Supervised Injecting Facilities focus on injecting drug use and seek to reduce harm through the supervision of people who inject illicit or unknown drugs in a more hygienic and less public environment than otherwise; the provision of sterile equipment; the provision of advice on safer injecting practise; intervening when an overdose occurs; and by referring people to other services, e.g. health, social, housing, legal, etc."

For many years, drug use in Dublin’s public spaces has been and continues to be, a matter of significant concern. For example, in 2005, the Lord Mayor’s Commission on Crime and Policing highlighted the public perception of the problem of public injecting in Dublin, “injecting in public places…a sight [which] causes distress to members of the public who feel threatened by such overt drug abuse on the streets…and a perception of lawlessness often ensues”.

In 2011 a public survey by Dublin City Council described ‘antisocial’ behaviour, including drug-related activities, as being the worst thing about Dublin. In that survey, there were over 400 mentions of drugs and drug use in the open responses.

"The persistence and significance of the problem over the last two decades suggest that existing policy responses have been ineffective in reducing associated drug-related harms."

Elsewhere, other public health-focused responses, such as Supervised Injecting Facilities, have been implemented successfully. But they have yet to be replicated in Ireland.

Opinión: Inyección supervisada de drogas en Irlanda -- 10 años de incidencia, legislación y retrasos

Los siete principios se articulan de la siguiente manera: acatamiento de los derechos humanos, participación significativa, enfoque en riesgos y daños, pragmatismo, centralidad en la persona, evidencia, y rendición de cuentas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

By István Gábor Takács / Rights Reporter Foundation

Harm reduction is an essential part of homeless services. Experts in the field talk about how they work by these key principles of harm reduction when supporting people experiencing homelessness.

This short video is a product of the Harm Reduction for Homelessness Erasmus Project, which was coordinated by FEANTSA and we were also participants of it. The aim of the HR4Homelessness project is to foster the capacity of homeless services to provide effective Harm Reduction support. HR4Homelessness identified one of the most urgent challenges of homeless services which is to improve HR services for people in situation of homelessness. Until today, people in homelessness who use drugs lack access to HR services, die or get infected with life-threatening diseases. Effective harm reduction is the first crucial step to improve their health situation. The Harm Reduction Key Principles support services in improving HR service provision. In this short video, participants of the project from various countries talk about how they work by these principles. The interviews were collected online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Principios clave de reducción de daños en entornos de personas sin hogar 

O’Gorman y Schatz esbozan los beneficios de alianzas entre la sociedad civil e instituciones políticas para abordar las necesidades de personas que consumen drogas respecto a reducción de daños. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

By Aileen O’Gorman and Eberhard Schatz / Harm Reduction Journal

In recent decades, a range of civil society organisations (CSOs) (such as drug user groups, non-governmental or third sector organisations, and networks of existing organisations) have sought to shape the development of drugs policy at national and international levels. Tese CSOs engage in peer, professional, and public policy advocacy and seek to efect change mainly through legislation, resource allocation, and service provision.

Civil society involvement in drug, and other, policy making has been enabled by the expansion of ‘democratic spaces’ for civil society participation at national and supranational level. By participating in such spaces (e.g. by writing submissions, or contributing to government committees and consultative fora) and seeking to infuence the formal policy making process, many CSOs have shifted focus from their traditional ‘outsider’ activist role to adopt an ‘insider’ strategy in the belief that social change occurs through politics.

However, the capacity for civil society to infuence harm reduction discourses and drug policies from the inside is shaped by the contexts in which they operate. At a national level, the level of ‘enabling environment’ for civil society is key. So too are the prevailing views regarding drug use and harm reduction, the extent and range of public health services to address drugrelated harms; and the local level of drug regulation and law enforcement. At a supra national level, there are spaces with varying levels of scope for infuencing drug policy. For example, the Vienna NGO committee (VNGOC) facilitates CSO access to the United Nations Ofce of Drugs and Crime and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND); and the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs provides a platform for dialogue and interaction with the European Commission and for feeding grassroots experience, expertise, and recommendations into European drug strategies and action plans.

Participación de la sociedad civil en políticas de drogas referidas a reducción de daños: reflexiones sobre el pasado, expectativas para el futuro

Es probable que la reforma, a pesar de que se presente como “estrategia basada en la salud”, perpetúe las vulnerabilidades que sufren quienes soportan la mayor carga de daños. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Last Friday, the government launched its policy on Ireland’s approach to the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use, following the report of the working group set up to examine the issue. In essence, the new policy adopts a staged approach to dealing with possession.

The first time a person is caught, they will be diverted for a (mandatory) health assessment with HSE. The second time, the gardaí will have the option to apply an adult caution under the adult cautioning scheme. The third time, the person will have used all their chances and will face criminal prosecution.

For those who have been following the policy as it developed to this stage, they will know that this is a policy born of compromise – an attempt to reconcile health and criminal justice in the context of personal drug use. However, there should have been no compromise, personal drug use is a health issue, pure and simple.

As a result, the policy is not likely to achieve its goals – adopting a health led approach, connecting people who use drugs with health services and breaking down the stigma associated with drug use.

In this piece, we look at the main reasons as to why this is the case.

La nueva política de drogas del Gobierno irlandés no hará nada para acabar con la estigmatización de las personas usuarias de drogas

Ana Liffey analiza el marco jurídico de Irlanda y la creciente base de pruebas a favor de la despenalización, y concluye que urge dejar de penalizar a las personas que usan drogas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Currently, Ireland is at a pivotal point in drug policy. A working group has been established under the National Drugs Strategy to consider the approaches taken in other jurisdictions to the possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use with a view to making recommendations on policy options. This is an important issue, and the purpose of this paper is to ensure that there is a strong civil society contribution to what is a national policy discussion of significant importance, as well as providing an evidence source on the adoption of a health led approach to the possession of small amounts of drug for personal use in the Irish context. The focus of this paper is on the decriminalisation of simple possession only, which, it is important to stress, is a discrete issue and is distinct from broader policy debates concerning the legalisation or regulation of drug markets.

At an international level, the focus and mechanics of drug policy have shifted over time – from an initial focus on supply and trafficking through a concerted effort to use the criminal law to address personal drug use, to today where the evidence is leading to a changing policy environment where the harms of criminalisation are well understood, and alternative approaches are pursued. In 2015, in his message on International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, then United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon used his platform to call on UN member states to:

‘…consider alternatives to criminalization and incarceration of people who use drugs and focus criminal justice efforts to those involved in supply. We should increase the focus on public health, prevention, treatment and care, as well as on economic, social and cultural strategies’

Domestically, legislators have always emphasised the importance of the health of people who use drugs, and the harms of being prosecuted, even where one is acquitted, are well recognised by state agencies. During the Oireachtas debates on our primary drug control legislation, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, it was clear that legislators saw personal drug use as something to be addressed through assistance, not punishment – the criminalising of simple possession was more an undesirable means to the desirable end of a drug-free society, rather than a desirable end in and of itself. As Deputy Haughey noted at the time:

“We have had to try, too, to bring in legislation that would render certain acts punishable but we have had to recognise that very often people committing these offences are not guilty of criminal activity in the normal sense but, perhaps, are people who require medical care and attention rather than punishment.”

Nonetheless, simple possession of substances scheduled under the Act was criminalised under section, and this continues to be the case today. Over the intervening years, regulations made pursuant to the primary legislation have also shaped the law on possession, as have various other statutes. The scope of the impact of the law in this area is considerable. In 2017, there were 12,201 recorded incidents of possession of drugs for personal use, representing over 72% of all drug offences. There are also high numbers of prosecutions with regard to drug related crime. The District Court received 20,746 drugs offences involving 13,033 defendants in 2016, although it should be noted that the available data does not detail the precise charges brought in each case.

The evidence base concerning drugs, drug use and drug control is much more developed now than it was in 1977. We know that the reasons for drug use are complex, and that there is no clear link between the harshness of a country’s policy on possession of drugs for personal use and levels of drug use. Prevalence figures for drug use are not significantly affected by whether or not simple possession is criminalised – there is no consistent ‘deterrent effect’. However, we do know that criminalising people is damaging. Words are important, and being labelled a criminal is stigmatising. The fact of being labelled a criminal can also have lasting negative impacts on people’s lives, such as by restricting access to the employment market and affecting travel rights.

Given that criminalising simple possession provides little benefit but significant harm, it seems clear that it is not a good policy option. In this regard, it is worth noting that when Ireland’s legislators enacted legislation to address novel psychoactive substances in 2010, simple possession was not criminalised. In our quest to limit access to, and control use of, substances not controlled under the 1977 Act, we did not need to criminalise possession for personal use. Thus, Ireland operates a dualist framework in relation to possession of drugs for personal use. Only possession of substances which are specifically scheduled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 is a crime. Non-scheduled psychoactive substances fall to be considered under the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010, and simple possession is not a crime under the 2010 Act.

A number of countries around the world have explicitly decriminalised possession of drugs for personal use. Evidence from these jurisdictions indicates that decriminalisation can, as part of a comprehensive policy approach, improve health and social outcomes for people who use drugs, something which is desired by all stakeholders. Importantly, decriminalisation also changes the way people who use drugs are perceived in society and is consistent with addressing drug use as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. In this regard, it is important to remember that people who use drugs are not hard to find, or a tiny proportion of the population as a whole. Rather, they are our friends, family members and colleagues - over a quarter of Irish adults report having used illicit drugs at some point in their lives. Using the criminal law as the means of addressing their possession of drugs is not a solid policy approach, and this report unequivocally supports the decriminalisation of possession for personal use and the adoption of a health led approach focused on reducing harm.

No son delincuentes: por un enfoque basado en la salud frente al uso de drogas

En paralelo a la consulta pública que está celebrando el Gobierno, algunas partes interesadas están organizando diálogos sobre la necesidad de mejorar los servicios sociales y poner fin a la penalización de las comunidades afectadas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Groups working at the coalface of the drugs problem are to lead calls today and tomorrow, in Dublin and Cork, for the decriminalisation of drug possession. It comes as the Department of Health revealed it had received more than 14,000 submissions in just three weeks in its public consultation in relation to the law around possession of drugs for personal use. The issue is being examined by a State expert group and, due to the level of public response, the department has extended the deadline for submissions from June 30 to July 13. The CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign, an umbrella group of local drug projects, is today holding a conference in Dublin. The speakers include Anna Quigley of CityWide, homelessness and youth campaigner Fr Peter McVerry, and senators Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and Lynn Ruane.

Journalist Anne Buckley, who made TV documentary My War on Drugs, Gerard Rowe, youth worker with Belong To Drug and Alcohol Service, and Ana Liffey Drug Project’s Marcus Keane are also set to attend. Speaking ahead of the event, Ms Quigley said that recent figures show there were 12,211 recorded offences for possession of drugs for personal use in Ireland, or some 72% of all drug cases. “Significant state resources are tied up in dealing with such offences including police time, legal fees, court time and that of the DPP’s Office,” she said.

Los cambios legislativos en Irlanda ayudarán a abordar el uso de drogas

La Comisión Europea debería redoblar su apoyo a las intervenciones de salud pública y social en materia de políticas de drogas, e incrementar el espacio de participación en esta de la sociedad civil. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

The Civil Society Forum on Drugs, an expert group of the EU Commission, is urging the Commission to provide adequate funding and staff to drug coordination and support demand and harm reduction interventions.

The European Commission is preparing the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) to define budget priorities for the post-2020 period. There are many concerned civil society voices warning us that EU decision makers would like to deprioritise social and health programs while there is a growing focus on security, border control and migration issues. Drug policy is a multidisciplinary field that has strong connections to both security and health policies – and its health and social elements are often left out of consideration. The drugs unit of the European Commission, that coordinates work in this area, has been renamed the Organised Crime and Drugs Policy Unit and is seriously underfunded and understaffed. This is a significant obstacle to the strengthening of coordination efforts in the implementation of the European Union Drug Strategy and the newly adopted Action Plan for 2017-2020, an example of pragmatism, humanism, and evidence-based policies unique in the world.

The Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD), an expert group of the European Commission, has sent a letter to the Commission recommending to strengthen drug coordination in the administrative structure of the European Commission, by providing adequate funding and staff to this issue. We also urge the Commission to prioritise social and public health interventions to reduce drug demand and drug-related harms in the new MFF. You can read the text of the letter below.

Ana Liffey Drug Project

Región

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