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).