While our politicians engage in culture war nonsense, five people die on streets of Belfast within a week…

If you follow the news, the biggest story of the week seems to have been an overexcited peeler driving around a roundabout.

The police officer celebrating Armaghs All Ireland victory, is depending on your political views, either a massive PR boost for the PSNI with the Catholic community or reckless endangerment and and an example of the PSNI losing all independence.

My reaction was a shrug of the shoulders and a view that that whole incident has been blown completely out of proportion.

But where the situation takes a darker turn is that the BBC reports that five people die on streets of Belfast within a week. From the report:

Speaking to BBC News NI’s Good Morning Ulster on Thursday, Jude White, chairperson of the Welcome Organisation said: “As I was informed last night by one of my senior staff, there has actually been five deaths now since last Tuesday and before the sun goes down tonight there will probably be another death.

“The public have a right to know, is the closure of a day centre directly related to these five deaths? One has to be speculative here, the likelihood is yes, but it’s by no means absolutely certain.”

The five people were all known to services – four were homeless.

He described the situation has “the biggest crisis” the organisation has “ever faced”.

With five people dying on the streets in a week, the outreach team are concerned.

“Not all of these were drug-related deaths, one was a blind man with quite complicated health issues,” Ellie said.

“He was released from Maghaberry [prison] with no GP, no medication and a long history of heart attacks.

“He died in his tent.”

I have issues with the report trying to frame it as consequence of the closure of the day centre, the sad reality is overdose deaths are now a regular occurrence all over Northern Ireland. NI has a really bad drug problem that is devastating families and communities, and it is not just an issue in cities, addiction is in every town and village. Again from the report:

The change in the types of drugs people are using in Belfast is very obvious.

Cocaine is the drug of choice now due to its availability, and most people are injecting it.

The UK government previously said 84% of those injecting drugs in Northern Ireland were injecting cocaine.

That’s compared to just over 5% in 2018.

“People are injecting 20 to 30 times a day – that’s 20 to 30 new holes in your body,” Ellie said.

“People are more confident when they are using cocaine, they’re more brazen.”

Here is the NISRA data on drug overdose deaths in NI:

• Figures show there were 154 drug-related deaths registered in 2022. While this represents a decrease of 59 (27.7%) from the 213 drug-related deaths registered in 2021, it is important to note that registration-based figures build in delays arising from system wide processes which can drive annual fluctuations in the series.
• Since 2012, NI has seen deaths due to drug-related causes rise by 98% from 110 to a peak of 218 in 2020 and to 213 in 2021. The 2022 total (154) represents a 40% increase on the number of drug deaths registered a decade ago.
• The majority (82.5%) of all drug-related deaths in 2022 were classed as drug misuse deaths.
• Of the 154 drug-related deaths registered in Northern Ireland in 2022, over two-thirds (69.5%) were men.
• Looking at the number of deaths by age, the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups together accounted for 55.8% of all drug-related deaths in 2022.
• Each year over half of drug-related deaths have involved an opioid. Between 2020 and 2022, an average of 118 drug-related deaths each year had an opioid mentioned on the death certificate.
• The number of deaths where alcohol is mentioned on the death certificate of drug-related deaths has been declining over the last decade. In 2012 the proportion of drug-related deaths involving alcohol was 31.8%, falling to 17.6% in 2022.
• Over two-thirds (68.8%) of drug-related deaths in 2022 involved two or more drugs. In contrast, in 2012 60.0% of drug-related deaths involved two or more drugs. While cocaine is not the most frequently mentioned drug on death certificates in 2022, it has emerged as the predominant substance mentioned in deaths involving only one drug in 2022, constituting 9.1% of total drug-related deaths and 35.0% of single-drug deaths.
• Belfast LGD had the highest age-standardised rate of drug-related deaths in 2022. (14.3 deaths per 100,000 population). Drug-related and drug-misuse deaths continue to be higher in areas of highest deprivation.

So although there is no connection between the overexcited peeler and these deaths I think it is very telling that there has been no outrage from our politicians about these deaths on the streets. No urgent meetings with the Health Minister, no press releases or tweets.

For clarification I am not just bashing Unionism, the rest of the parties are no strangers to getting caught up in petty nonsense and ignoring the big issues.

Nor do the rest of us get off easy. This is a multifaceted societal problem that we all need to play a part in solving.

I recognise the huge challenges of the problem. For those of us who have been unlucky enough to have had family or friends with addiction issues they can be very tiring and hard work. At our darkest moments we might even think they would be ‘better off dead’ or when they do die we can look upon it as a ‘relief to the family’.

It is a horrible situation but I get angry when I see politicians metaphorically stepping over the bodies of addicts to give a sound bite of some culture war nonsense.

These hundreds of deaths every year are someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister, mother or father. They deserve more than indifference from our politicians and wider society.

We need to do better.

I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.