There was much excitement yesterday from Social Democrat TD Gary Gannon at the news that Dublin City Centre is to get a new supervised injection clinic, where drug (mainly heroin) users can go and stick needles in their arms under medical supervision. Here is what the Deputy had to say, welcoming the news:
“I have long advocated for a health-led, compassionate response to our capital’s drug problem – one that prioritises the safety and wellbeing of those suffering from addiction.
“The new injecting facility at Merchants Quay, due to open in the coming days, will provide a clean, safe environment for intravenous drug users under the supervision of medical professionals.
“International evidence shows that this approach leads to less public injecting on our streets and, more importantly, reduced deaths from overdoses and infectious diseases. Crucially, drug users are also more likely to engage with addiction, counselling and health services when attending supervised facilities.
“Solely depending on a policing solution to drugs often leads to the displacement of the problem to other parts of the city and the criminalisation of those living in poverty.”
There is I think a very fair argument that from the point of view of the drug addict, supervised injection centres are a good idea. There is nothing particularly wrong about anything that Deputy Gannon writes above.
Except one thing: The idea that public policy should be made from the point of view of the drug addict.
One can have human compassion for a person suffering with drug addiction while recognising that their addiction has consequences not only for themselves, but for the society around them. Drug addiction fuels crime, anti-social behaviour, homelessness, and – here’s the one people are generally too polite to mention – leads to the sheer sight of drug addicts lying around the streets of the capital city in the middle of the day, off their heads.
I would argue, by contrast, that public policy should be made with the interests of the law-abiding citizen in mind. Further, I would argue that the law abiding citizen – the person who just wants to enjoy a peaceful, clean, and crime-free city centre – has a much greater claim to the attention of policymakers than the drug addict does.
I was struck by this, earlier this year, in the Polish city of Krakow. In the old town of that city, which is a major attraction for tourists, I saw a very un-Irish scene unfold: A man, clearly not in the best of ways, was sitting by himself on the side of the public street, drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag, and begging. As I watched, a police van pulled up beside him, and four officers got out, arrested him, and carted him off to god knows where. Public drunkenness is a crime in Poland, and the city authorities have decided that there should be zero tolerance of that kind of thing in their city. They prioritise the interests of the law-abiding citizen: The right to a peaceful and pleasant atmosphere for those who pay their taxes and want to enjoy their city.
This stands in sharp contrast with Dublin, where the authorities have already installed multiple methadone clinics within a kilometre of O’Connell Street, and where to walk through the city centre is to encounter a parade of addicts, drunks, and other people clearly not fit for normal interactions with the rest of the population. The net affect of all of this is a city that is – now by almost universal agreement – deeply unpleasant and where the atmosphere is dense and hostile.
Now, the question I’d ask is as follows: Does putting a supervised injection facility for heroin addicts smack bang in the middle of the centre of the capital city mean that the centre of the capital city will attract more, or fewer, heroin addicts?
The answer to that question, I’d argue, is very clear.
There’s another question too: Are heroin addicts a social good, or a social ill?
If our answer is – and I think it must be – that heroin addicts are a social ill, then the obvious conundrum is what to do about them.
I think the Poles have it right. The answer should be to remove them. Utilising vagrancy laws and public order laws, and the courts system, we should be seeking to clear the city centre of the very people who make it an unpleasant place for the law abiding citizen. That does not mean criminalizing those people or lacking in compassion for them. But it does mean recognising that they pose a problem for others.
Were I in charge, they’d all be removed to a detention facility somewhere in the Wicklow mountains, and a change in the law would be introduced to make detention in a person’s best interest legal should they be determined to be dependent on an illegal substance. If the state wishes to prescribe methadone to those people, it can be done in that detention.
This will doubtless sound brutal to some. So be it. But I think a society that was truly compassionate would be a society that sets standards, imposes them, and assists those who cannot meet them by removing them from society to where they can get help.
I do not think it is compassionate – for addicts or anyone else – to have them lazing around the streets of Dublin, waiting for their next supervised injection. That, more than any alternative, treats them like human rubbish.
But Gary Gannon’s views are much more popular than mine. That, in part, is why Dublin City Centre is what it is today.
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