In the article below inner city community development worker Patricia McCarthy gives her personal view of why the campaign has been so popular and energetic. In the next issue of this paper we will be printing more viewpoints, letters from readers are welcome. Everyone knows by now that Dublin is experiencing a very serious heroin epidemic with an estimated 8,000-9,000 heroin addicts in the capital alone. This situation did not arise overnight but has been growing for the past fifteen years. Heroin addiction and the accompanying H.I.V. and Aids related deaths has become a fact of life for devastated inner city communities, and more recently working class suburbs from Tallaght to Blanchardstown.
Heroin addiction is closely related to disadvantage and poverty.
The communities where it has taken hold are precisely those which have been abandoned economically and socially by the state for several decades now. While Ireland is allegedly experiencing an economic boom, whole working class communities have been written off and left to struggle with the inevitable decline into drug addiction and crime. Hundreds of young addicts have died during this crisis which everyone on the ground is convinced is even worse than the last one in the early eighties. However, overall, they were successful in forcing the state to respond to the drugs crisis by imprisoning some of the most notorious heroin dealers. Exactly the same tactics are being used this time around.