3,866 crack pipes given out by Task Force so far this year
THE devastating impact of crack cocaine addiction in Tallaght came into sharp focus this week, with the launch of a new report by the Tallaght Drugs and Alcohol Task Force (TDATF) on Monday morning.
Among the revelations contained in the report, entitled The Landscape of Substance Misuse and its Impact on the Communities of Tallaght’s Drugs and Alcohol Task Force, is the finding that the task force had given out 3,866 crack pipes up to September 2021 as part of their harm reduction service.
Over 400 people – 33 per cent of whom are women – are in regular contact with the task force in relation to crack cocaine use, while terminology such as “epidemic” and “tsunami” was used by frontline workers to describe the impact of crack cocaine use in the locality.
According to the report, the scale of drug and alcohol addiction is among the highest in the country and is growing at the fastest rate with 75 per cent of new cases presenting in 2020 coming from the TDATF area. Drug-related crime in the area increased by 75 per cent between 2017 and 2018.
The report was launched in Killinarden on Monday by Senator Lynn Ruane, who is from the area and worked in addiction services in Bluebell before she began her political career.
Speaking at the launch, Senator Ruane recounted her time working in addiction services, and her frustration at a lack of funding for addiction services.
“I remember when we first started giving out crack pipes in Bluebell, when I worked there in 2010,” she said.
“We were not regulated to do so, but we were ordering them from China and were giving them out up and down the Luas line.
“Crack was going from Dolphin[‘s Barn] up and down to Bluebell and we’d jump on and we’d be giving out crack pipes.
“That was 2010 and 2011. And just to see, still, how exasperating the issue has become and how big the issue is.
“And the investment is actually at pre-2008 levels. So I’m talking about something that had massive prevalence 15 years ago and the investment hasn’t changed.
“The thinking hasn’t changed. The compassion from a Government level has not come through to actually introduce real, positive interventions in people’s lives.
“And services like [the one] we’re in today are firefighting. And they should no longer be firefighting. They should be able to take their time and their resources to be creative in what they do with people.
“To actually be able to have the freedom to think and go, ‘What else can we do? What else can we introduce into people’s lives?’
“But we can’t do that if we’re literally in crisis mode, crisis management all the time.”
TDATF had its budget cut from €1.3m in 2010 to just €1.2m this year, and it is calling for an additional €1m in government funding to take on more frontline staff to address the crack issue, create more residential addiction services, develop more direct interventions for vulnerable young people, and to fund more gardai on the ground.
The task force is also calling for more staff for frontline community-based services, funding for projects working with young people on the street who are not in any service, more crack cocaine projects and family support services, and more residential places and specific programmes for those who have recovered.
For Senator Ruane, the need for these services has a particular resonance as she has friends who live in the area who struggle with addiction.
“When I talk to my pals who are still caught in it, they’re using drugs to escape reality,” she explained.
“Then when they try and come out after relapsing, they realise they’ve made the reality they tried to escape from a little bit worse. It keeps going…it’s a constant chase of trying to escape something and fix something.”
