Dr. Bernard Kenny:

Like everybody in the population, GPs have their own levels of comfort or discomfort and their own experiences. Some GPs trained in inner city areas and they are used to dealing with issues associated with social deprivation and addiction. For others, it is completely outside of their comfort zone. As part of our remit, we promote addiction medicine as a specialty. I refer to part of the broader approach to destigmatisation and depenalisation of people who suffer with addiction. Enforcing that for society as a whole will help to address that demand. It is an important issue and we recognise that ideally people should be treated by their GP, but it depends on that GP's training and level of expertise.