Submission on Behalf of the Family Addiction Support Network and the Irish Bishop’s Drugs Initiative
Drug use is a complex and multifaceted issue that now affects all communities, both urban and rural, across Ireland. While the current approach to drug policy focuses primarily on criminalization and punishment, there is growing evidence that this approach has been ineffective in addressing drug use and its associated harms. Instead, there is a need for a more comprehensive and evidence-based approach that prioritizes harm reduction and public health and genuinely helps the person who suffers from addiction.
Recognising the importance of the needs of families, the founders of the Family Addiction Support Network set up peer-led family support groups in their local area. The people involved found great strength in the union of their voices. These groups led to the formal organisation of the network. It is led and run by adult family members who have lived experience of addiction. This peer element is fundamental to the organization as is the training and support provided to facilitators. It is based on the principles of partnership and community development and the inclusion, participation and empowerment of families impacted by a loved one’s substance misuse.
In 2019 The Family Addiction Support Network published research findings from a study on how families are affected by substance misuse in the North-Eastern Region of Ireland. This study highlighted the effectiveness of families coming together, sharing resources, and supporting each other. It advocated for families to be included in policies and in all support and services provided by the state.
The empathy and sense of community that family participants experience in FASN was palpable in the interviews, with the peer support aspect of FASN consistently highly valued. The quick response participants received from FASN was highlighted but moreover the feeling that they were accepted – there was no judgement; participants were listened to and felt looked after.
Knowing that facilitators had been through similar experiences was shocking on the one hand but also reassuring; it broke through the sense of isolation, anxiety, fear, shame, blame and guilt. Participants who had joined a family support group, got a valuable sense of belonging, of being amongst others who were going through or had gone through what they were experiencing and that became their anchor.
FASN truly believe that by supporting families to have their needs met, families are then able to change the outcomes for themselves. To do this FASN creates an environment where people can learn for themselves and are supported in the choices they make, we then respond to family’s needs by developing services.
This is our Harm Reduction ethos and we have built our continuum of care model around this and develop ‘experts by experience’ with National accreditation in Group Facilitation Skills, Conflict Management and the 5 Step Method
To date FASN provides,
- 24/7 Out of Hours Telephone Helpline
- 1-1 Support
- Peer Group Support
- Access to Counselling
- Access to Respite
- RISE Educational Programme
- Drugs Related Intimidation Reporting Programme
FASN has gained considerable support for its ‘Stop the Stigma’ campaign which aims to de-criminalise personal drug use. FASN believes in the decriminalization of personal drug use in order to remove the stigma that blights, and seriously damages, the future prospects of people who have been caught in the net of addiction. Instead of being criminalised, and all the negative consequences that entails, the person with addiction should be provided with immediate and quality health care to tackle the issue and be offered a specific information course to educate them about the dangers of the substances they are using.
FASN considers that the most important and effective way to reduce drugs related harm in society is to include the families of people with addiction in all services and policies, to value them as experts through their lived experience of being affected by substance misuse. FASN and the Irish Bishop’s Drugs Initiative (IBDI), which provides education on the dangers of drug use to primary and second level students and to community groups throughout Ireland, believes that through empowering individuals, families and communities with skills, knowledge and support, and through promoting a restorative practice of healing broken relationships, the cycle of addiction and criminality within families will be broken.
FASN and the IBDI do not believe in legalisation of drugs such as cannabis. The legalisation of such drugs, outside of specific medically controlled usage, would be disastrous for public health and for communities across the island. If alcohol or nicotine were new drugs coming on the market today, they would be banned because of the serious negative effects they have on health and on the social fabric of society. Why then would we legalise another drug that has even worse, social, psychological and physical effects?
The policy backdrop to substance misuse in Ireland is the national drug strategy, Reducing Harm Supporting Recovery, which included families, in their own right, as service users. The FASN and the IBDI welcome this inclusion as they do the inclusion of alcohol as a substance that is misused.
Research on the effectiveness of family support shows that families of problem drug users have the potential to be the key to their rehabilitation process. Over 40 years ago families were marching on the streets of Dublin calling for something to be done about the heroin epidemic in their local communities. More recently thousands of people took part in a rally in Drogheda to voice opposition to drug-related violence in the town which led to the gruesome murder of 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods in January 2020. That murder sent shockwaves throughout the country and has led to a focus on the Drogheda area that has had some positive effects. The attention and focus, however, that Drogheda has experienced in recent times should be nation wide as a matter of course.
FASN highlights the ongoing plight of families in both urban and rural areas in the North East, because of drug debt intimidation and the lack of services for drug users and their families. The FASN and the IBDI have been calling on the Irish Government for years to properly resource Community led projects across the country. Families are the nucleus of the community and substance misuse and drugs related intimidation have a negative ripple effect on everyone who lives in the many communities that have been affected. These can no longer be dismissed as urban communities in certain socially deprived areas. The negative effects of drug use has spread to all rural areas as well. There are reports of sports teams who cannot field a full team because of the drug use of members, farmers who have had to sell land because they were intimidated into paying off a son or daughters drugs debt, or tragically it leading to a hopelessness and despair that has led to suicide. FASN and the IBDI are very aware of this situation and the IBDI has promoted the drugs avoidance message in many schools and parishes in rural areas particularly in the lead up to confirmation.
In summary we believe that the Citizen’s Assembly should be informed that:
- Because of the complexity of the issue the current criminalization approach to drug policy has been ineffective in addressing drug use and its associated harms.
- The legalisation of drugs such as cannabis, outside of specific medically controlled usage, would be disastrous for public health and for communities across the island. Why legalise drugs that have severe social, psychological and physical effects?
- The Family Addiction Support Network (FASN) believes that providing peer-led family support groups to those impacted by a loved one’s substance misuse, community development and the inclusion, participation, and empowerment of families can have a hugely beneficial effect on harm reduction in communities.
- FASN supports families to have their needs met, creates an environment for learning, and responds to their needs by developing services, following a harm reduction ethos.
- FASN, along with the Irish Bishop’s Drugs Initiative, advocate for the inclusion of families in all services and policies and support a restorative practice of healing broken relationships to break the cycle of addiction and criminality within families.
- FASN and the IBDI also welcome the inclusion of families in the national drug strategy. FASN highlights the ongoing plight of families affected by drug debt intimidation in urban and rural areas in the Northeast of Ireland.
Representatives are willing to address the Citizen’s Assembly on Drug Use in person to make these points and to speak from their own experience.
