Ana Liffey Drug Project - video submission to the Citizens Assembly on Drugs [9 minutes]. The video includes people with lived experience and highlights issues such as…

• Dual Diagnosis; the issues facing our service users is wider than just mental health and addiction. Many of our service users have undiagnosed intellectual disabilities and other issues such as ADHD; it not possible to get an adequate assessment of these for adults who use drugs. These undiagnosed and therefore untreated comorbidities hold people back.
• Lack of housing impacts on people’s engagement with harm reduction and stabilisation; their safety and their recovery.
• Lack of Treatment and Rehab services in the regions is a problem for people who use drugs.  For example, in one week, one of our Midwest Team members (and a volunteer) spent two working days driving two separate service users out of the region for assessment. That’s just for the assessment, not even getting into treatment.
• Alternatives to methadone are urgently required as a harm reduction / community treatment option; and people need to have suitable solutions which don’t have them attending a clinic every day.
• Ana Liffey supports the Government’s policy of implementing a Health Diversion Program for the possession of drugs for personal use.  This policy is a step in the right direction. However, this scheme would be enhanced, and more effective, if people were offered every opportunity rather than the one opportunity currently planned for.

Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign - (see attached PDF for submission) CityWide has called for the decriminalisation of the people who use drugs in their submission to the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs. We also called for the re-establishment of an independent Combat Poverty Agency – with real teeth and resources – to tackle the well-established links between poverty and drug harm.

Pavee Point - Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use submission video. Developed in partnership with UISCE, the Traveller Drug Advisory Group and Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, this video highlights the Traveller-lived experience of addiction. [13 minutes]

See also, Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use session recordings:

• session recordings 24 and 25 June 2023
• session recording 13 May 2023
• session recordings and presentations 15-16 April 2023

My UISCE - Lived & living experience of drugs video | Citizen's Assembly on Drugs (10 minutes)

For the Citizen's Assembly on Drugs, UISCE is facilitating videos that share the experiences of those who have been affected by drugs and drug policies. This is to ensure that those who are most excluded in society, are listened to and to broaden the discussion on the citizens assembly to ensure the valuable experience of those most impacted are part of the change we hope to seek.

UISCE Submission to Citizen's Assembly on Drugs Use. Introduction on Youtube (1.48 minutes)

Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Drugs and Alcohol Task Force - See attached PDF for the submission

Crainn’s Submission to the Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use- See attached PDF for the submission

Depauls Submission to the Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use - See attached PDF for the submission