On 2 August 2019, the Government announced the launch of a Health Diversion Approach to the possession of drugs for personal use. The final report of the Working Group to Consider Alternative Approaches to the Possession of Drugs for Personal Use and supporting documents were also published that day.^1,2,3 Taking into consideration the findings of this report and the range of stakeholder views, the Department of Health and the Department of Justice and Equality agreed to adopt a more health-led approach to possession for personal use.

The theme of the National Drugs Forum for 2019 is ‘Inclusion Health: responding to complex health needs of people who use drugs’. Inclusion health is an emergent approach to policy development, service delivery, and research. It seeks to explain the health impact for those living as part of a vulnerable and excluded population, and to work towards preventing and redressing the consequences of these determinants.

The Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018¹ was signed into law by the President of Ireland on 17 October 2018. The Act faced much opposition from various interest groups and the three-year interval between publication of the Bill and enactment of the Act was the longest ever in Ireland.

The initiative of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA), What Works: Sharing Knowledge, Improving Children’s Futures, was launched by Minister Katherine Zappone on 19 June 2019. The event brought together key stakeholders in policy, provision, and practice communities.

In 2018, the Western Region Drug and Alcohol Task Force (WRDATF) committed itself to supporting the implementation of Planet Youth in parts of the region.¹ As a first step, data were collected using the standardised Planet Youth tool with students in schools in participating areas. The results of these surveys are available on the programme’s Irish site, http://www.planetyouth.ie – launched in May 2019.

Ireland’s national drugs strategy Reducing harm, supporting recovery: a health-led approach to drug and alcohol use in Ireland 2017–2025 was launched in July 2017.¹ The first progress report on the strategy was published in June 2019, namely Reducing harm, supporting recovery: progress 2018 and planned activity 2019.²

As previously reported in issue 69 of Drugnet Ireland,¹ the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, jointly launched the Hidden Harm strategic statement, Seeing through hidden harm to brighter futures,² in January 2019.

The impact of changes in legislation on drug-using behaviour is an area of interest for policymakers and other stakeholders. In 2017, a paper by Smyth et al. explored the relationship between changes in Ireland’s legislation related to new psychoactive substances (NPS) and their problematic use by looking at national drug treatment data.¹

In 2017, CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign produced the report, Stimulating and supporting a black and minority ethnic voice on drug issues.¹ The research aimed ‘to explore possible structures and processes through which to engage with, hear the voice of, and empower Black and minority ethnic [BME] communities in relation to issues of drug use’ (p. 5).

Deaths caused by the toxic effect of drugs (poisoning deaths) are preventable and good clinical practice with supporting legislation can help prevent such deaths. Irish data on poisoning deaths show an increase in direct pregabalin-related poisoning deaths from the years 2013 to 2016.¹

The 16th annual report from National Self-Harm Registry Ireland was published in 2018.¹ The report contains information relating to every recorded presentation of deliberate self-harm to acute hospital emergency departments in Ireland in 2017 and complete national coverage of cases treated.

A recent Irish study¹ analysed trends in addiction treatment demand in prisons in Ireland from 2009 to 2014 using available national surveillance data in order to identify any implications for practice and policy.

A recent Irish study aimed to explore prison governors’ and officers’ views on barriers and enablers to HCV screening and treatment.⁴ In this research, published in the BMC journal Health & Justice, five focus group sessions were conducted among two grades of security staff: the prison governor and the prison office.

In order to plan preventive measures, an investigation was commissioned by the National Suicide and Harm Prevention Steering Group to review the deaths of prisoners in Ireland between 2009 and 2014.⁴ Coroners’ findings were analysed, including postmortem tests, to assess whether drugs played a role or not.

The Health Service Executive’s National Office for Suicide Prevention and the National Suicide Research Foundation assist the Irish Prison Service with data management, data analysis, and reporting. This article highlights findings from a report¹ detailing the first 12 months of data on the analysis of all episodes of self-harm across the Irish prison estate in 2017.

Recent research added to the HRB National Drugs Library website

https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/