The Lord Mayor Criona Ni Dhalaigh and several students unions in the Dublin area today launched a poster campaign to push a harm reduction strategy around pills.
While surely welcome, it’s a bit sad it’s taken til 2015 for this rather muted approach to harm reduction to take hold. I’m not here to poop all over the party, it’s impossible not to compare it to to the far more visually striking work by The Loop in the UK either and how they link this sort of approach into a whole other range of tactics.
“The only way to make a difference is to not be afraid to talk about the sensitive subjects. Drugs are common and popular, we all know this, yet fail to talk about them openly. Through this campaign we are breaking the silence and starting this conversation.”
Dead right. Such campaigns are a start – going beyond it means arguing for follow through with proper feedback mechanisms on what’s actually circulating in all those little pills and party powders.
That’s not as hard as you think. Ready made models exist where results of specific batches are filtered back to the user communities to short cut any tragedies.
It’s something we covered in #rabble5:
“By not considering strategies to alert users to what’s in their recreational stashes and how to keep themselves safe. They are making us fall victim to middle Ireland’s drug-use cliches and worst nightmares.”
As the junking of any look at clubbing laws here shows, these issues are really on the back burner for most politicians and rule makers.
Read more rabble ramblings on harm reduction here.
Comments
This is why we need regulations. They have machines in the bathrooms of night clubs in Amsterdam to test them
Oh lord Liveline will be painful this week.
Pills are good for children
Eh have they heard of the Internet!
You could get far better info in a an issue of mixmag
Síona Ní Chatháil