Ms Aoife Bairéad:

We have to remember, because sometimes drugs can be talked about as if they are the baddie in the room, that most people who use drugs do not engage in problematic drug use or have negative outcomes. The people who have difficulties with drugs and alcohol have similar experiences and live in similar communities, not just in Ireland but across the world. Terms like “self-medication” hold true. People are medicating against things that have happened. There is excellent evidence that people use certain drugs and alcohol when they have experienced certain trauma. We know these things to be true. We can, therefore, either address the problem at that level, and know that is what we are addressing, or we can keep on pinpointing the problem drug, labelling it cocaine this year, heroin three years ago and benzodiazepines five years ago. We can keep on treating the problem in this manner but that is to treat the problem incorrectly. I am sure the regional task forces will speak to that effect.

In other areas, it is very much about alcohol. I undertake assessments of children and families throughout the country and can say that alcohol has destroyed families in the same extraordinary ways as drugs have destroyed other families where people have died, are incapacitated or where their children are lost to care. It is about treating the harm being done to those people from the experiences in their lives and because of the areas in which they live. Those two things go together. One of the quickest ways people seem to move out of those traumatic response behaviours is to move out of poverty. That is the evidence. We can either take an evidence-led approach or we keep on trying to silo the problems as being about this drug or that drug or whether a drug is legal or illegal. The problem is about the hurt, trauma and harm being done to people.