PUSHING the addict out (of a community) "was only a quick fix", said Mr Tony Geoghegan, of the Merchants Quay project at the conference yesterday. It was "no answer to a complex problem".
However, although the cry in the Eighties had been "drugs out", in the Nineties it was "the more mature responsible cry" of "pushers beware, addicts we care".
Despite this, a survey carried out at Merchants Quay during two weeks last May indicated there was still a real problem of violence against addicts, he said. Out of 136 participants, 52 per cent had been threatened, 27 per cent had been assaulted, while to per cent had been forcibly evicted.
Mr Fearghal Connolly, of Community Response, in the south inner city, said pushing addicts out was "not the answer". Those who favoured such a strategy were "bigots", of the same frame of mind as those who "would burn unmarried mothers, blacks, gays and others who don't fit in with their narrow concepts".
He called for "a radical overhaul of economic and social conditions" towards solving the problem. "All agencies must realise they have to strengthen the community to take ownership of the problem and [that they] be resourced accordingly."
Ms Mary Ellen McCann, of the Ballymun Youth Action Project traced the growth of the drug abuse problem in Dublin.
She spoke of the sense of abandonment felt by affected communities. The "hurt" caused was "extensive", she said, businesses had closed and the media reinforced an image of despair.
Now, however, leadership was being developed from within. "We must believe in people, as the President said, and we must also believe in our addicts, that they can and do recover," she said.
Mr Pat McLoughlin, programme manager with the Eastern Health Board, said it was "critical" the board achieved consensus in communities on the locations of treatment centres.