General meeting of community activists
Citywide will hold a general meeting of community activists on September 17th to look at how we can respond to the serious slowdown in the government response to our drugs crisis.
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Cocaine
Following on the cocaine report prepared jointly by NACD and NDST in 2006, a paper was presented to the Inter Departmental Group in September 2006 outlining how the recommendations of the Report were to be implemented and who was responsible for implementing them.
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Rehabilitation
Since the release of the Rehabilitation Report in May 2007, Citywide has been urging the Dept of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs to begin implementing the report by establishing the National Drugs Rehabilitation Implementation Committee (NDRIC), which is to be responsible for driving the implementation of the report recommendations.
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Community Policing Fora
The setting up of Community Policing Fora in Local Drug Task Force areas has been an action in the NDS since 2001, about half of the LDTFs currently have some form of local policing forum in place. When the Joint Policing Committees (JPCs) were established in 2006, the guidelines for the JPCs included a reference to drawing up guidelines for the operation of Local Community Policing Fora. In early 2008 a committee was set up by the Dept of Justice to look at developing those LCPF guidelines.
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Young Peoples Facilities and Services Fund
As you will be aware, the Young People Facilities and Services Fund has been moved from the Drugs Strategy Unit in DCRGA to the Office of the Minister for Children (OMC). This move is the complete opposite to what the community sector has been calling for for years i.e. that the YPFSF should be integrated more fully into the work of the Drugs Task Forces.
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Crack cocaine
Local community reps are expressing concern about the increasing levels of crack cocaine use that they are seeing in their communities. A pilot action research project on crack cocaine has been underway under the auspices of the North Inner City Community Policing Forum and it has been looking at crack cocaine use across the Dublin area.
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Prisons
Action 24 of the National Drugs Strategy refers to the need to expand the involvement of the community and voluntary sectors in prison drug policy and identifies the Local Prison Liaison Groups as a means of facilitating this involvement.
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Trade unions
A conference on the role of the Trade Unions in responding to the drugs and alcohol issue was organised jointly by SIPTU and Citywide and took place in April 2008. The aim of the conference was to provide trade union members with an opportunity to discuss the drugs and alcohol issue and to identify ways in which the trade unions could be involved in responding, in partnership with the community sector.
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Traveller Community
Citywide has been working in partnership with the Traveller Specific Drug Initiative(TSDI) in Pavee Point for a number of years to support the involvement of the Traveller community in the National Drugs Strategy.
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Mainstreaming
The principle of mainstreaming has been a core principle of the drugs strategy since 1997. Despite this there have been a number of serious problems with implementing it. First, the projects that were mainstreamed in the first round have not had their budgets increased or their salaries benchmarked.
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LGBT Community
As part of the development of the new NDS, Citywide has worked with groups representing the LGBT communities in making a submission to the NDS. Empirical research from abroad consistently reports higher levels of drug use amongst gay men and lesbians than in the general population. Both anecdotal evidence from the LGBT community in Ireland and findings from the limited amount of research that has been carried out here indicate that this is also the case in Ireland.
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Alcohol
The Working Group set up by the Dept. of Health to look at developing links between drugs and alcohol policy has been meeting since the end of 2006. You will be aware that the community and voluntary sectors were not originally included in the Group and we had to campaign hard to be included, even though the initial drive to look at the alcohol issue had come from the community sector.
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Needle exchange
In response to a request from former Minister Pat Carey and in line with recommendation 5 on cocaine, the NDST, NACD and HRB produced a paper on needle exchange which set out key recommendations on how needle exchange services should be rolled out across the country through a partnership approach between HSE and Drug Task Forces.
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Development of new National Drugs Strategy (NDS)
The community sector is represented on the Steering Group for the Review of NDS by Fergus McCabe and Martin Hayes. The consultation phase is now coming to an end, this included public meetings around the country, receipt of written submissions, meetings with a range of sectors and groups and a number of issue specific focus groups.
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Methamphetamines
The issue of methamphetamines has been in the news recently, with the first major seizure of this drug in Ireland.
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