Mr. Shane Hamilton:

The only thing I would add is that what we need to welcome at a forum such as this is to modernise and articulate the modern context of the impact on the community from a drug policy sense. I put it in the presentation because it is not an emerging trend. Five years of a substance being reported within a local community is not an emerging trend; it is the modern world we live in. Community projects are the ones that found these trends, brought the information to the task forces and requested money from the HSE CHO 7 or any other CHO. That is the form it should be going.

We have treatments and prevention and these are important and vital pillars within any response to the drug strategy. From a front-line manager's perspective, sitting in the community and looking at this on a daily basis, a colleague of mine has called this a college industry. This is now coming across in every element of this local area, from young people through poverty and desperation getting involved in the distribution of it to people being vulnerable and intimidated into production. It is presenting in every element of a very vulnerable community. When we look at prevention and treatment, we also need to look at what kind of symptomatic issues are part of this and make sure that we invest in the communities that can respond to this effectively. Five or six years is a concerning length of time to get to this forum to start discussing what needs to happen on the ground.