Legislation should be introduced to decriminalise heroin and make it a controlled substance, Mr Joe O'Toole (Ind) told the Seanad yesterday. In a debate on the annual report of the EU's Monitoring Centre for Drugs, Mr O'Toole said that a new approach needed to be taken to heroin, which he described as the "great killer" of the drug world.
"The whole crime area based around heroin could be demolished tomorrow morning if heroin was made a controlled substance rather than an illegal substance," he said. "We would be immediately pulling the rug from under gangsters."
Mr O'Toole stressed that he wanted to see the drug decriminalised, not legalised.
He also called for a more truthful approach to advising young people about drugs.
"The dangers of drugs are not going to convince young people not to try them," he said, describing it as "a lie and an untruth" to tell young people that using one drug automatically leads to another. Education should concentrate on helping young people to develop the confidence and self-esteem they needed to say "No" to drugs.
The Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, called for greater co-operation at local level to deal with the drug problem.
He said that each area had to accept appropriate drug treatment facilities, and was critical of those who resisted the establishment of satellite treatment centres in areas where they were needed.
Such actions would "further undermine the social fabric, not just of the community, but will destroy individual lives as well."
He said that he would be regulating the area of methadone programmes over the coming months. He criticised the "inappropriate" dispensing of methadone by certain GPs and pharmacies, and stressed the need for proper urinalysis for those using methadone, to prevent them from using the drug to "top up" their addiction or sell on to other addicts.
Mr Cowen also suggested that a mandatory register of addicts might have to be established in conjunction with the methadone programmes.
"We cannot have a situation where we have methadone being prescribed to people who are not genuinely involved in a drug treatment programme," he said.