Do other first world countries suffer from "junkie/scumbag" problem that Ireland does

corner of hells

riclad wrote: »

Maybe other countrys have a large police presence in tourist area,s .
Dublin city centre has many drug treatment centres ,
in the city centre.
People may see 3 or 4 young people in a street and assume they are junkies ,when the are just dressed in a certain way, trainers ,baseball hats etc
the average junkie cant afford to live in dublin 4 or middle class area ,s .
So they tend to just go to the city centre.
Every western city has x per cent of people who use drugs to excess .

It has a lot of supports for addicts , actual detox and residential treatment centres tend to be outside the city centre.

Kermit.de.frog

Potatoeman wrote: »

They also put addiction clinics outside the city center too.

This.

This is the single biggest act of self vandalism (that's what it is) in Dublin and it is never discussed.

Every junkie in Dublin, if not Leinster, goes to the city center on a weekly basis for services. The problem is huge but it's condensed in to such a small area that it looks really bad for visitors and locals.

And where you get junkies you lower the tone and like flies on sh!t the casual scummers arrive too.

It's a mess.

And there are real consequences. A couple of years back an American stockbroker had his back broken on the boardwalk in an unprovoked attacked by scumbags hours after arriving at the airport.

Getting the clinics out of the city center would do wonders for the city's image, feel and reputation.

corner of hells

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

This.

This is the single biggest act of self vandalism (that's what it is) in Dublin and it is never discussed.

Every junkie in Dublin, if not Leinster, goes to the city center on a weekly basis for services. The problem is huge but it's condensed in to such a small area that it looks really bad for visitors and locals.

And where you get junkies you lower the tone and like flies on sh!t the casual scummers arrive too.

It's a mess.

Getting the clinics out of the city center would do wonders for the city's image, feel and reputation.

It's not just moving the clinics , Kermit , a multitude of services would have to move.

Everything from dental , HIV support , specialist medical , accommodation .

mvl

corner of hells wrote: »

I'm just wondering did you manage to read what I posted ?

I'll help ya a little , I was enquiring where we could move the various supports not the individual addicts.

why not retreats to more ... rural areas ? would think cheaper rent/services would go with that. city centre is small/crowded even without this issue.

are we saying homeless people follow the services (put in place to support them), or follow the tourists, or another option ?

- just seeing Dublin region has 74% of homeless people, wow.

the purple tin

Dublin is the worst. There are junkies in Cork, Belfast and Galway etc. but the dubs are by far the most brazen, when it comes to using in public, creating a scene etc..
They all tend to gather in a big group in the same area waiting for their methadone so it would look pretty bad to a passerby.

Flippyfloppy

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

There’s junkies in most cities. Our junkies look hideous though. Irish people tend to be grotesquely ugly, and injecting heroin doesn’t help either.

Ah come on! Where's your sense of loyalty?? They're OUR junkies you're putting down!

corner of hells

the purple tin wrote: »

Dublin is the worst. There are junkies in Cork, Belfast and Galway etc. but the dubs are by far the most brazen, when it comes to using in public, creating a scene etc..
They all tend to gather in a big group in the same area waiting for their methadone so it would look pretty bad to a passerby.

You do realise methadone is prescribed from various locations not just in one spot and that an addict doesn't necessarily have to attend their clinic/chemist daily.

corner of hells

mvl wrote: »

why not retreats to more ... rural areas ? would think cheaper rent/services would go with that. city centre is small/crowded even without this issue.

are we saying homeless people follow the services (put in place to support them), or follow the tourists, or another option ?

- just seeing Dublin region has 74% of homeless people, wow.

Where would you move the services too ?

Would you be comfortable with a low threshold hostel near where you live ?

Heebie

Every country where drugs are illegal tends to have a problem.
Every country where drug addiction is looked on as a serious personal failing rather than as an illness tends to have a problem.
Legalise, tax, and regulate.

mvl

corner of hells wrote: »

Where would you move the services too ?

Would you be comfortable with a low threshold hostel near where you live ?

what is a low threshold hostel ? is it a special homeless hostel - where general public is not allowed (also cause its not safe ?!?). maybe its just terminology (as I thought accommodation for homeless people is called homeless shelter).

anyway, what do they care how far from city centre this is, as long as they reach there on provided transport, a bed/dinner waits for them ?

I suggested retreat in a more rural space, closer to nature. on this, as purpose is similar in a way: as this country had sanatoriums in the 50'es-60'es - so where were they based, where they not in Dublin's vicinity - so not in city centre ?

no.8

Donald Trump wrote:

Imagine being so desperate as to have to make friends with a Yank

Someone delete this fools comment

pauliebdub

Many US cities are far worse than Dublin in this regards, San Francisco has tens of thousands of drug addicts, alcoholics and homeless and a much higher crime rate.

corner of hells

mvl wrote: »

what is a low threshold hostel ? is it a special homeless hostel - where general public is not allowed (also cause its not safe ?!?). maybe its just terminology (as I thought accommodation for homeless people is called homeless shelter).

anyway, what do they care how far from city centre this is, as long as they reach there on provided transport, a bed/dinner waits for them ?

I suggested retreat in a more rural space, closer to nature. on this, as purpose is similar in a way: as this country had sanatoriums in the 50'es-60'es - so where were they based, where they not in Dublin's vicinity - so not in city centre ?

Low threshold means having individuals with , I suppose , extreme end of behaviour.
Chronic entrenched addicts , significant mental ill health ,possible years of rough sleeping , imprisonment . Behaviours needing support across a load of levels.

I don't understand your third paragraph.

I think there's a lot of disappointing **** in Ireland being tolerated and it's far from junkie problems to be honest. Take that women this week that was told by an overpaid consultant, that "he forgot" to tell her about her cancer diagnosis on at least 4 occasions since being aware of it!! Yeah he'll still practice all day long!!
as will the HSE

It's the rapist that broke terms of bail 4-5 times which went unchecked before he destroyed some innocent girls life...yeah whomever missed that one will go unmentioned by paul williams this sunday because there's kinahan top tens to print!!

There's an entire crowd of bent scumbags from top commissioners, ex commissioners, civil servants, HIQA and yes even mouthpiece journos conspiring daily to pull a good man down in maurice mccabe while they smile into the gallery like smug crocodiles!

**** junkies, they never had a chance. These other ****ers had the benefit of high education, good families, fortunate circumstance and benevolent opportunity...yet I'd sooner wash my hands after shaking that showers claws than I would a junkie.... correct in part, we have a scumbag problem and most of them earn big money for it!

Donald Trump

no.8 wrote: »

Someone delete this fools comment

Keyboard Warrior alert :pac:

corner of hells

Donald Trump wrote: »

Keyboard Warrior alert :pac:

Maybe just move inside Mr President , just watchin' for snipers here.

Stephen15

Other cities and countries have their own problems for example I've been Italy a few times recently and almost every large train station there has large groups of Africans loitering around them. The walk from Catania city centre to the train station in Sicily was really like the road to hell for example.

The place was filthy dirty, full of closed down shops which were vandalised and loads of intimidating African men hanging around every street corner selling tat. I was also hassled by an illegal taxi driver who hussling for business while I was waiting for a bus to the airport.

He kept saying that the bus to the airport took over an hour so I told him that I have loads of time and would prefer the bus but he continued to hassle us.

mvl

Was told TB epidemic in this country in the fifties got ~ 10k deaths. this needed a special programme at the time, and as part of that programme was setting up more TB hospitals=sanatoriums (up to 5k beds) that helped reducing the death rate.

The general public was not too keen to live beside these sanatoriums neither - similar to the shelters for addicts.
I don't mean to be offensive, and my view may be too simplistic (cause I don't have so much history of the city): but I would have thought an addict that needs shelter and medical staff support + medication/food shouldn't mind where they get the support from: location can be similar to how these sanatoriums were, in the city vicinity, not central.

househero

amandafrom97 wrote: »

My American friends who came a week ago say they are a bit disappointed

Could you please tell your American friends I am equally as disappointed with their own craphole of a country after their carefully censored film's, TV shows and adverts gave me different expectations than seeing families living in tents by the highway, public transport that comes with a complimentary rape or stabbing and food I wouldn't give a dog.

Im quite happy your American friends were disappointed, so many Americans I have spoken to are disappointed I don't fetch my water from a stream, live in a mud hut and laugh when I told them I have 1gb fibre. Our media machine is painting them a rosy ol picture of Ireland.

relax carry on

Chinasea wrote: »

Just not true.

Unless things have altered dramatically in the last 18 years then San Francisco was a haven for homeless. Not sure if they were junkies or not but when we took a 20 minute drive out from the city centre to our hostel, I thought there were dead people on the footpaths. Turned out they were just homeless according to the driver.

mvl

Possibly un-related: is this really a new problem, or is it an older problem that re-surfaced now ?

I am just after finding two books that seem to be on this subject, different century:
"Dear, Dirty Dublin - A City in Distress 1899-1916" - by Joseph V. O'Brien and
"Dublin Slums, 1800-1925: Study in Urban Geography" - by Jacinta Prunty

Any historians our here who know anything about these ?

dudara

I think your American friend is very naive. If you’re in the centre or affluent areas of Washington or Baltimore it all looks great and if you’re a wealthy white person, that’s all you might ever see. Go a little further out and it’s drug central and seriously dodgy.

Donald Trump

dudara wrote: »

I think your American friend is very naive. If you’re in the centre or affluent areas of Washington or Baltimore it all looks great and if you’re a wealthy white person, that’s all you might ever see. Go a little further out and it’s drug central and seriously dodgy.

Whereas a wealthy black person must be living in the ghetto???


Black people can get wealthy from things other than selling drugs and robbing stuff you know



And wealthy Latinos aren't all just creaming it at the top of gangs



I wonder about wealthy Asians

MadDog76

Magnolia Inexpensive Exterminator wrote: »

I've never been anywhere, and I'm relatively well traveled which had the amount of open drug abuse as I've seen in Dublin.

Either you haven't been to any major cities in the US, UK or mainland Europe, or you walked around with your eyes closed, if you haven't seen blatant public drug abuse worse than you'd ever see in Dublin.

"Relatively well travelled" you are not......

jacksie66

This post has been deleted.

Pretzeluck

MadDog76 wrote: »

Either you haven't been to any major cities in the US, UK, or mainland Europe or you walked around with your eyes closed, if you haven't seen blatant public drug abuse worse than you'd ever see in Dublin.

"Relatively well travelled you are not......

I'm well traveled too and can confirm that Ireland is worst or at least most noticeable. There should be voluntary euthanasia.

MadDog76

Pretzeluck wrote: »

I'm well traveled too and can confirm that Ireland is worst or at least most noticeable. There should be voluntary euthanasia.

Please feel free to name all these major cities/countries which don't have open drug-use???

Chaos Tourist

Pretzeluck wrote: »

I'm well traveled too and can confirm that Ireland is worst or at least most noticeable. There should be voluntary euthanasia.

So that opens up voluntary euthanasia for everyone else who wants it? Or is it just drug addicts and then we can have a super happy brave new world technology centered country and we can finally advance to Skynet?

Pretzeluck

MadDog76 wrote: »

Please feel free to name all these major cities/countries which don't have open drug-use???

Berlin, Paris, Rome. You will not find junkies in the city centre begging for coin. You have military patrolling there and throwing them out.

Pretzeluck

Chaos Tourist wrote: »

So that opens up voluntary euthanasia for everyone else who wants it? Or is it just drug addicts and then we can have a super happy brave new world technology centered country and we can finally advance to Skynet?

Yes, everyone that wants it. I would use it as well.

Subcomandante Marcos

Magnolia Inexpensive Exterminator wrote: »

I've never been anywhere, and I'm relatively well traveled, which had the amount of open drug abuse as I've seen in Dublin.

You have travelled a bit but if you think Dublin is bad I'd recommend you skip Washington DC, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Portland, Minneapolis, and pretty much any other major city in the US because as bad as heroin use is in Dublin, Crack and Meth are worse there and now you have a creeping fentanyl and heroin issue across massive parts of middle america thanks to an FDA crackdown on prescription opioids like oxycodone which millions of people were self medicating with but can no longer get.

And if you Dublin is bad, take a walk around DTES Vancouver and you'll be very surprised.

Every major city has issues.

In Africa and South America the problem is often kids huffing glue, in the US it's often crack and meth, in parts of eastern Europe it's Desomorphine and meth.

I'd rather take the zombies of Dublin city centre than most of the others.

MadDog76

Pretzeluck wrote: »

Berlin, Paris, Rome. You will not find junkies in the city centre begging for coin. You have military patrolling there and throwing them out.

You haven't seen junkies in Berlin, Paris or Rome!?!!??!

Just like the other lad spouting nonsense you must have been walking around with your eyes shut tight!!!

Pretzeluck

MadDog76 wrote: »

You haven't seen junkies in Berlin, Paris or Rome!?!!??!

Just like the other lad spouting nonsense you must have been walking around with your eyes shut tight!!!

Yep, everyone else is wrong and you're the only one right. Forget that multiple people here have confirmed the same. Have you been there yourself? You seem to be making up things.

Pretzeluck

MadDog76 wrote: »

You haven't seen junkies in Berlin, Paris or Rome!?!!??!

Just like the other lad spouting nonsense you must have been walking around with your eyes shut tight!!!

Yep, everyone else is wrong and you're the only one right. Forget that multiple people here have confirmed the same. Have you been there yourself? You seem to be making up things.

MadDog76

Pretzeluck wrote: »

Yep, everyone else is wrong and you're the only one right. Forget that multiple people here have confirmed the same. Have you been there yourself? You seem to be making up things.

Pretzeluck wrote: »

Yep, everyone else is wrong and you're the only one right. Forget that multiple people here have confirmed the same. Have you been there yourself? You seem to be making up things.

I've lived in both Paris and Rome ........ I've been to Berlin several times ....... I'm guessing I'm a bit more well-travelled, street savvy and life experienced than yourself.

Pretzeluck

MadDog76 wrote: »

I've lived in both Paris and Rome ........ I've been to Berlin several times ....... I'm guessing I'm a bit more well-travelled, street savvy and life experienced than yourself.

Of course you were. What a coincidence that you have happened to live just in the cities that I have named.

Yamanoto

Exit the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt & you'll easily spot raggedy-assed mutants, who make Dublin's junkies look like extras from Baywatch.

I could name many places in Europe & the States where the city centre vibe is on a whole other level of menace than our capital.

Scumbags have been phased out gradually since the early 2010s and they are almost extinct now as far as I can see. People are much more conscious of their own behaviour and how they appear than they were before smartphones made everyone feel they have to put their highest-status-appearance-self out to the world. You rarely see anti-social behaviour in broad daylight nowadays or even on nights out. You no longer see groups of scary young men in hoods and tracksuits, lads who grew up in actual deprivation, lads always a few years behind in fashion. The same guys and girls whose older relatives were happy to go on the dole now feel socially compelled to have a “career” and access to third level for all has laid the blame at the feet of individuals for not having a high status job, impelling everyone to work harder on average. Teenagers engage in less drug taking, drinking, underage sex etc than before apparently. People in general drink less. There has been a middle-class-isation of irish society in the last decade, having the effect of making the society appear more socioeconomically homogenous, and this was caused my many factors in combination.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

Magnolia Inexpensive Exterminator wrote: »

I worked on the door of The Gypsy Rose on Aston Quay for seven years (it closed last Nov) and almost without exception tourists would mentioned the amount of junkies on the streets, and the price of a pint in Templebar.

I've never been anywhere, and I'm relatively well traveled which had the amount of open drug abuse as I've seen in Dublin.

'Open drug use'. Yet the Gardai can pick you up for having a small bit of weed on your person, and hit you with a criminal conviction. We need to sort ourselves out as a country in regard to drug laws. No more convictions for soft drugs offences!

MadDog76

Pretzeluck wrote: »

Of course you were. What a coincidence that you have happened to live just in the cities that I have named.

Two of the ones you named, I've also lived in several other cities/countries as well as visited most of the world including the US, UK, Europe, parts of Africa and the Middle East ..... as I said, I'm probably a bit more well travelled than yourself.

Autochange

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

You have travelled a bit but if you think Dublin is bad I'd recommend you skip Washington DC, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Portland, Minneapolis, and pretty much any other major city in the US because as bad as heroin use is in Dublin, Crack and Meth are worse there and now you have a creeping fentanyl and heroin issue across massive parts of middle america thanks to an FDA crackdown on prescription opioids like oxycodone which millions of people were self medicating with but can no longer get.

And if you Dublin is bad, take a walk around DTES Vancouver and you'll be very surprised.

Every major city has issues.

In Africa and South America the problem is often kids huffing glue, in the US it's often crack and meth, in parts of eastern Europe it's Desomorphine and meth.

I'd rather take the zombies of Dublin city centre than most of the others.

I agree but their problems go mostly unnoticed in ****ty suburbs. Ours are in the city centre for all to see. It's due to the all size of Dublin.

ArchXStanton

I find the scumbags in Dublin to be a different breed,far more aggressive,I'm guessing its down to alcohol and drug abuse.

Graces7

murpho999 wrote: »

It's amazing how so many people on Boards have friends from abroad who point out Ireland's shortcomings to them.

Dublin's junkie problem is no worse than any other city, especially compared to an American one.

Also, did they not go around the Georgian quarter or hop on a Dart along the coast. Dublin is not just O'Connell Street?

Is that something to be proud of?

MarkY91

My foreign girlfriend can't get over how much homeless people and how much junkies roam our city centre. Sure most cities have the same issues but they're not all in the city centre like in Dublin.

I've seen a passed out junkie in a wheelchair 3 times in about 2 weeks. Why isn't the government doing anything about these vermin?

MarkY91

Pretzeluck wrote: »

Berlin, Paris, Rome. You will not find junkies in the city centre begging for coin. You have military patrolling there and throwing them out.

I don't know about junkies in Paris but I've seen homeless people all over Paris. Although they looked like hipster poets sitting there reading books which I found interesting compared to other cities homeless people

MadDog76

Graces7 wrote: »

Is that something to be proud of?

It's something that should be acknowledged as true ..........

Squatter

Omackeral wrote: »

With convenient stops at the Four Courts and St James's Hospital. God bless the Luas Red Line.

And God help the unsuspecting tourists who decide to use it to visit the National
Museum!

Stephen15

MarkY91 wrote: »

I don't know about junkies in Paris but I've seen homeless people all over Paris. Although they looked like hipster poets sitting there reading books which I found interesting compared to other cities homeless people

Also Paris and Rome has loads of Roma beggars there especially on the Metro

MayoSalmon

MarkY91 wrote:

My foreign girlfriend can't get over how much homeless people and how much junkies roam our city centre. Sure most cities have the same issues but they're not all in the city centre like in Dublin.

You have obviously never been to any large city in the states...homelessness over there is almost a lifestyle choice the set ups some of them have!

asteroids over berlin

nah it is pretty bad in the city centre, about 20 yrs back there were only a few scrouts about and some alcos. In many european cities they are drawn to train stations, i lived in Brussels, prague, Sydney, Amsterdam - amsterdam is pretty ok due to implementation of needle programs/services, Sydney is ok until you get to some suburbs, Brussels can be well ropey, prague too. Dublin just has the scrouts slap bang in the city centre, we need to change this