From the inception of the Medico-Social Research Board, we carried out studies of drug taking, including cigarette smoking and alcohol, among children in primary and secondary schools. In the 1970s there was no serious problem of illegal drug taking in Ireland, although about 10 per cent of school children had experimented with marijuana and an even smaller percentage, particularly in the inner city of Dublin, had used ‘uppers’, the amphetamine group of drugs, and ‘downers’, generally barbiturate sedatives. By far the commonest drug used by young people was alcohol, cider in particular. We organised a number of programmes to persuade the government to stop all advertising of alcohol and cigarettes in the media and to persuade young people not to start smoking.

In the nineteenth century in Ireland, when alcohol abuse was an even greater problem than today, Father Theobald Mathew introduced the concept of ‘taking a pledge’ not to drink alcohol. Father James Cullen founded the ‘Pioneers’ in 1898. Pioneers not only take a very solemn pledge but also wear a pin in their jacket lapel to show that they are total abstainers. While the ‘rounds’ system was very common in Ireland – a system by which everybody in a group was expected to stand a round of drinks – a pioneer is not persuaded to drink alcohol.

In the late 1970s a number of chemists’ shops were burgled and morphine and opium derivatives, such as Diaconal and Palfium, were stolen. From 1980, heroin was being imported into Dublin, and an epidemic of heroin injecting began in the inner city, where over half the population were unemployed. This heroin epidemic particularly affected young people of between fifteen and twenty-four. In 1982, when discussing this problem with Michael Woods, the Minister for Health at the time, I decided to ascertain how common the use of heroin was in Dublin.