'Investment key to save young people from drugs' - Save The Next One
A Belfast community worker has called for more investment in deprived areas, to stop young people from turning to drugs.
Steven Pollock spoke to Downtown Radio/Cool FM as part of our Save The Next One campaign.
He works with the ACT initiative, around community transformation in the Greater Shankill area.
Steven said drug use is gravitating towards the wider trend seen in Northern Ireland.
"The likes of cocaine and cannabis is still used widely when they're socialising," he said.
"They see it as normal now to go out and have a lot of pints and a couple of lines of coke.
"The main concern though at the minute is prescription drugs.
"Whenever they take cocktails of these, it seems to be that which is causing the deaths."
He claims the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the area is among the more deprived in the city, with young people taking drugs because they had no other activities to engage in.
"People just don't see any other outlook in life," he said.
"They don't have to get up in the morning to go to work or to college, to further themselves.
"There is nothing else to look forward to so they just think 'why not take drugs and forget about it all?'"
The issue is affecting all parts of the community, with prescription drug misuse not simply limited to young people, but also being prevalent among their parents and other adults.
"At the start of the year there, we had three deaths quite close together," he said.
"Then in the rest of the Belfast area, there were six and there were other people who were in intensive care due to drug abuse.
"If that's anything going to go by, how many more deaths are there going to be?"
On top of all those aspects of the problem is the fact that there does remain some influence over the local drug trade from paramilitary organisations.
However, according to Steve, those are usually from dealers operating under the banner of an organisation to try and intimidate people into not reporting them.
"The thing is, people won't question it," he said.
"That's what needs to happen.
"If someone is portraying themselves as a paramilitary and selling drugs, report them to the police.
"And if people aren't comfortable reporting them to the police, come to places like the ACT initiative and we will report them to the police for you confidentially."
If you wish to contact us to tell us your story of how drugs have impacted your life, you can do so by emailing news@downtown.co.uk or if you wish to seek help for addiction issues, more information can be found here.