Some characteristics of drug abusers attending a drug treatment centre in Dublin.

The problem of drug abuse among adolescents in Ireland is a serious and a growing one, according to the reports of the Government Working Party (1971) and of a Churches Working Party on the abuse of drugs (1972). About 1966 the first indications of this new Irish problem were seen in raids on chemists’ shops and various stores of the old Dublin Health Authority pharmacies. At the same time Walsh (1966) reported that 16 patients had been admitted to St. Loman’s Hospital suffering from amphetamine dependence. Carney, et al. (1972) in a paper on the social and psychological background of 50 young drug abusers in Dublin pointed out that ‘the majority of the sample began using drugs in their post-school-leaving year’. The number of young people involved in this type of drug abuse is very much smaller than the number of older people who abuse alcohol and probably also much smaller than the number of middle-aged people dependent on tranquillisers and hypnotics. The drug scene is an everchanging one, and is largely dictated by the availability of the drugs on the current illicit market. It is also modified, at times dramatically, by legislation such as was used to control amphetamine abuse in 1970. In 1972, the misuse of the morphine alternative (Diconal) reported by Kelly was reduced by the co-operation of the manufacturers in removing the drug from general circulation. New drugs and new mixtures (e.g., certain cough mixtures) appear weekly in small quantities as substances of abuse or experimentation. In October 1969, as a result of an Interim Report of the Working Party on drug abuse to the Minister for Health, the Jervis Street Hospital Drug Advisory and Treatment Centre was established. Now under the Eastern Health Board, other treatment units are functioning and still others are projected. The patients who attend at Jervis Street Drug Advisory and Treatment Centre for medical treatment do no necessarily reflect the type of abusers and extent o drug misuse among those who never seek help Nevertheless, a study of some of the characteristic of those who attend the Jervis Street Hospital Drug Advisory and Treatment Centre gives a picture of one important section of the drug-abusing population