drug abuse

Our comfortable hypocrisy with addiction…

| Readers 2096

Q. What is the similarity between the DUP’s Christopher Stalford, the SDLPs Paul McCusker and the N. Ireland Office. A. An interest in drug addiction services. But there the similarity more or less ends. I feel genuinely sorry for Christopher Stalford for falling into such a simple trap. He was only doing what politicians do, supporting and articulating the concerns of his constituents, in this case, those living in the Donegall Pass and Botanic area. Christopher is concerned that the …

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Prescription drugs – The Opium of the People?

| Readers 1251

Publication of the statistics on General Pharmaceutical Services in N. Ireland is not I suspect a much-anticipated annual event and this might go some way to explain the lack of media attention when the report was released last week except for a brief overview in the Irish News. The report provides the facts and figures on the medicines we used, misused and abused last year and, for me at least, it makes for interesting if not depressing reading. It would …

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The Opioids of the People

| Readers 1047

The United States government has launched a new anti-opioid campaign featuring true stories of people so desperate that they inflicted gruesome injuries on themselves to get another prescription. Such stories have already been more effectively told in poetry. The epidemic’s most searing skald is William Brewer, a son of Oceana, West Virginia, a post-industrial town so gripped by addiction that it is nicknamed Oxyana. We were so hungry; Tom’s hand on the table looked like warm bread. I crushed it …

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Prescription drug deaths. Do we not care because most of the victims are poor?

| Readers 601

This week’s BBC Spotlight on prescription drug addiction made for grim viewing. We have covered prescription drug abuse before but when you see the faces of the victims and their distraught families it really brings the scale of the issue home to you. There was the mother who can look out her bedroom window and see the grave of her son. The father who was just numb with grief. The mother who had converted her living room into a mini …

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Prescription Medicines in the Dock – Who is to blame for the increasing drug deaths in our society?

| Readers 449

Ireland bucks the UK trend in drug overdose deaths; here they are more likely to result from “prescription medicines” than “illegal drugs”. Coroners locally implicate; tramadol, oxycodone or fentanyl in overdose more frequently than in England, Scotland or Wales where deaths are mainly linked to; heroin or cocaine. One implication is that prescription medicines are more readily available and, extending this logic, doctors and pharmacists are in some way involved; if we did our jobs better drug deaths would be …

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Drug Addiction Services: what is the policy?

| Readers 364

We are currently in Belfast experiencing a significant increase in the number of people with drug addictions and I’m informed that similar rises in prevalence are occurring elsewhere.  In addiction things are never simple.  A 24-year-old patient who died back in the spring died of an overdose of opioids – he frequently had a number of fentanyl patches adhered to his body – but he also was a heavy smoker of marijuana and regularly took a range of prescription medicines …

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Parents dropping their underage kids off to go drinking in the park…

| Readers 1935

Over the past few years, there has been a major issue with underage kids drinking in the Falls Park and City Cemetary. At weekends hundreds of children gather to drink, take drugs and do all the usual things that teenagers do. The problem is especially severe in the summer. Underage drinking is not exactly new, but the main issue is the massive vandalism that is going on. Thousands of pounds worth of damage is being caused to the children’s play park. …

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