Workshops on how to inject drugs in a safer way and the opening of medically supervised injecting centres should be considered as potential ways of dealing with the drug problem in Dublin city centre, a new report has recommended.

The report by Merchants Quay Ireland (MQI), which works with homeless people and drug users, was based on a study of 338 people attending the organisation's needle exchange programme.

According to MQI, this programme aims to ‘minimise the harms associated with drug use and educate drug users on potential risks'.

The study found that the vast majority of service users were Irish men, although a total of 19 different nationalities were recorded.

The average age of men attending was 34, while the average age of women was 32. Nine in 10 people using the service were based in Dublin and almost one in three were classified as homeless.

While heroin was the most commonly used drug, prescribed methadone, benzodiazepines (tranquillisers), cannabis and alcohol were also prevalent. Other drugs used included cocaine and steroids.

The report noted that three in four people were poly-substance users, in other words, they used more than one drug. According to MQI chief executive, Tony Geoghegan, this ‘confirms that people are still using heroin, but polydrug use is now the dominant trend'.

He pointed out that in Ireland, ‘there are currently no detox options for this group'.

Meanwhile, the study also found that at least one in four drug users had shared injecting equipment and paraphernalia in the past month, while during the last week, one in eight had injected in a public place.

While most of the drug users said they had been tested for HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B, on further asking, it became clear that many had not been tested in at least a year. For example, almost four in five people said they had been tested for HIV but of these, over half had not been tested within the last year.

The report noted that ‘uptake of treatment for those who reported being positive for HIV appears to be a problematic issue'. A low rate of people accessing treatment for hepatitis C was also found.

In relation to this, the report noted that convenience is an important factor for injecting drug users in the management of such conditions and ‘low-threshold services are ideally placed to attract clients which have not been previously screened'.

"The recommendation that screening is offered and promoted within harm reduction services, as advised by the National Hepatitis C strategy 2011-2014, the European Centre for Monitoring Disease and Drug Addiction (2010) and the World Health Organisation (2010), is therefore supported," the report said.

Meanwhile, it also suggested the idea of medically supervised injecting centres, which are not currently available in Ireland, but are available in cities such as Madrid and Sydney.

"The proportion of assisted injecting and injecting in public places reported in the present study represents a significant amount of injecting drug users who are at elevated risk of severe health consequences. Such a strategy is not endorsed through national policy...however further consideration of safer injecting facilities in an Irish context is warranted in future national policy deliberations," the report stated.

It also noted that the population of opiate (heroin) users ‘is ageing'.

"As the needs of older drug users tend to be more complex, future research should address if services are structured to cater for impacts which may accompany this shift in age profile," it said.

It also called for further research into the area of polydrug use, including potential treatment and rehabilitation options for those using more than one drug.

The report recommended that service providers should monitor the level of service use by currently under-represented groups, such as women and migrants, to ensure that their needs are being met.

It also noted a high proportion of high risk behaviours, such as injecting in the neck and groin. These findings ‘highlight the importance of the role of safer injecting workshops and suggest that there is a need to ensure that every effort is being made to direct clients to such a service. Services should encourage client participation in safer injecting workshops irrespective of whether clients are newly injecting or have longer injecting careers'.

The full report can be viewed here

For more information on MQI, click here