Mr. Tom Murray:

We need to provide community education and community preparedness for the services as well. Deputy Hourigan spoke about defibrillators being present at every street corner, which would be very welcome. If we start sticking naloxone access points at every street corner, people would have the perception that would invite drug users into the area and would normalise a taboo issue which not everybody sees.

I used to work in a drug-dependency pharmacy in England. When we started doing methadone and needle exchange, I was attacked because I was told I was attracting all sorts of undesirables into the community. Brian Mawhinney was my local MP, so it was in the middle of central Tory-land and not the most attractive place to be seeing drug use. The patients existed. The patients were in the community. Nobody came from outside the community. I did not set up a gravitational pull for drug abusers; I set up a treatment centre for patients who are dependent on addiction services. The first step in all that resourcing must be community education. There must be preparedness prior to the services so that the services are seen as health services provided by GPs, pharmacists and those in addiction services rather than facilitators of drug use. The first step needs to be patient education. We are all involved in that and would be prepared to be more involved in it.