Mr. Andy O'Hara:

It is really the type of use also. Cocaine use has massively increased and crack cocaine has massively increased but people taking multiple drugs is very prevalent. This could be alcohol, cocaine, tablets, crack cocaine, heroin, or crystal meth. We must be conscious there are multiple drugs and a never-ending supply of new drugs coming onto the market all the time. We need to be conscious of how we respond collectively to all those drugs and how informed we are on drug checking. We must also understand that there are underlying conditions behind all this. There is a huge issue with crack cocaine across the country now. Most of them are people who probably would have been taking just heroin in the 1980s. They come from the same backgrounds, the same communities, with the same traumas. It is about trying to recognise and respond to the polydrug use and also really getting underneath and trying to address those underlying conditions for why taking the hardest of drugs is more prevalent among such people.