Ms Anita Harris:

There has absolutely been a significant increase in those presenting for treatment for cocaine. What is really important, however, and it keeps getting drowned out in most media, is that alcohol remains the substance for which the largest numbers of people seek treatment. We have 18 services across Ireland. Cocaine is the drug with highest use, but actually alcohol use is dominating every service across the board. When the national drug treatment reporting system, NDTRS, and the Health Research Board separated out alcohol and the drug treatment presentations this created a distortion in the numbers where it looks like cocaine is actually dominating across, but alcohol remains the biggest. Sometimes we as services need to not get too reactionary or react in all our services to address the cocaine needs when alcohol is still the dominant substance for which people seek treatment.

The HSE got very active, and I was really impressed at how activated they became with the surge in cocaine use. Cocaine treatment programmes were initiated right across the country. Funding became available to most counties. Interestingly, it was a drug that absolutely did not discriminate. It went across every region, every county, every age and every gender. There was a really rapid response for services to then address the needs of that cocaine use. We must not forget, however, that there are other substances. I keep hearing that opiate users are ageing out and there will not be any, but we still see plenty of opiate users. I look at how many people are still in receipt of methadone. This tells us that the opiate users are still there. We just need to be careful as service providers that we do not start moving our services to just respond to one drug only.