Over the past fortnight, drug use and abuse hit the front pages in a big way. The most widely covered story was about the model Kate Moss, who was videoed by the Daily Mirror chopping out lines of cocaine and snorting them in a recording studio with her boyfriend (or, depending on who you believe, new husband) Pete Doherty.
It was some fucking spread to wake up to, that’s for sure: pictures of Kate, a crisp rolled-up note to her nose, leaning over a line, ready to ingest it. And deathless prose stating that she had done five lines within a period of a few hours to add to the gaiety of the nation.
I know that Kate Moss is a celebrity. I know that she might even be considered as a sort of role model, by fashion-conscious teens. The media theory is that, as a result, she is fair game. But there is something deeply disturbing about this kind of journalism and the way in which it assumes the right to pry around in the personal lives of those individuals who are misfortunate enough to be targeted.
In this instance, there was an element of revenge involved. Moss had taken a libel action against the Sunday Mirror in response to a story the newspaper published in January of 2005, claiming that she had collapsed into a coma after a cocaine binge. When she sued, the paper was forced to settle, apparently at a cost to the Mirror Group of over £1 million. Someone clearly decided that they would wait for her in the long grass. They didn’t have to hang around for too long.
Who made the video? How did they gain access? And what were they paid? And was it worth it to them, seeing the impact of their handiwork on a woman who most people accept is a relatively decent and down-to-earth person, despite the crazy success she lucked into as a model almost 15 years ago.
It’s hard to get your head around the level of betrayal involved…
For all the column inches devoted to the Moss exposé in Irish newspapers, it was a far less important drug story than another one that got precious little coverage. Merchant’s Quay Ireland, the drug rehabilitation centre, issued its annual report last week. At the press conference, director Tony Geoghan made an impassioned plea in favour of putting more State resources into detoxification and drug-free treatment options.
The figures he quoted could hardly have been more telling, in a single, simple stroke, identifying the underlying barrenness of Government policy on drugs.
There are, we know, approximately 14,500 opiate users in Dublin. Extraordinarily, of these, more than half – 7,500 – are on methadone.
Tony Geoghan did not criticise this policy. There is very strong evidence that methadone addiction is just as debilitating as addiction to heroin, but he chose not to dwell on this. Furthermore, evidence suggests that a lot of those who are put on methadone programmes end up taking both methadone and heroin – ending up with an even greater level of toxins in their system as a result.
Tony emphasised something different. In comparison to the numbers undergoing methadone treatment, he pointed out, there are less than 30 detoxification beds and only 150 residential drug-free beds in the city. In other words, far from encouraging people to free themselves of their addiction to heroin, the policies of the State contribute to prolonging it.
Of course there is a cost issue in supplying drug-free beds and proper detoxification programmes. But the brutal fact is that the vast majority of the people clogging up the Irish prison system are drug addicts. According to a recent report, A Study of the Number, Profile and Progression Routes of Homeless Persons Before the Courts and in Custody (2005), 54% of those in prison have been homeless at some stage in their lives.
The same report identifies drug use as a clear risk factor related to homelessness and criminality and recommends the development by the probation service of strong links with drug-treatment facilities.
This link, as we have said in Hot Press on numerous occasions, has been blindingly obvious for years. So why are we creating an extra 1,000 prison spaces rather than investing the money in directly combating drug addiction through appropriate treatment? These are the skewed priorities of Ireland in the modern era: the emphasis is on banging them up rather than helping them. Compassion is a dirty word in the new culture of name and shame and blame.
Well, it’s about time the politicians and the civil servants started to listen to people like Tony Geoghan. It is about time they took a long hard look at the crazy waste of money that is involved in the current pathetic and unsuccessful little war on drugs that is being waged here.
Free enough people of the ravages induced by heroin addiction, and there is the possibility of halving the prison population. Not only that, but the crime rate would fall dramatically, with all sorts of concomitant benefits for ordinary citizens, in terms of a better and more civil society.
That should be the objective, rather than locking more and more people up.