The infamous commandment written on the wall in animal farm "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" is wheeled out as a commentary on communism, apartheid and general social injustice. But it also came to mind this week when, two days in a row, heroin made headlines.

On Monday, figures from drug testing in Irish prisons showed that, in many jails, the majority of inmates were using heroin, and up to 94% of some prison populations were taking methadone. Then on Tuesday, a report from the addiction agency Merchant's Quay revealed that every week in 2008, their needle-exchange programme grew by 20 new heroin users, bringing to 5,500 the number of people seeking help from the service. And that's just people who want to get off the stuff.

In spite of this, there is no national treatment network to combat heroin addiction. The message being: unless you live in a city where resources for treating people who are using the widely available drug are already stretched, screw you. Heroin has infiltrated every town in Ireland. We know that, the cops know that, health workers know that. But at government level, they just don't care. Why? Well, because people don't care about junkies, so why should the government?

Irish people, driven into a frenzy by the media, wet themselves over the influx of cocaine over the past couple of years. Cocaine is hot. Rock stars do coke. Models die doing coke. People in Ireland's top 'social set' do coke. But the impact cocaine has on society is minimal. Despite the rise in fatalities from cocaine use in Ireland, still only a handful die annually.

Cocaine use in this country is largely recreational and, despite the endless squawking about 'cocaine culture', for the most part, the drug has very little impact on the health, psyche or lifestyle of the casual user. All cocaine is, is the world's biggest waste of money designed for idiots.

The same can be said for the melodramatic freak-out about ecstasy use in the '90s as if it was going to lead to the downfall of society. But ecstasy is relatively safe and is taken by massive swathes of the population across Ireland every weekend with few repercussions. You don't hear about it because it's no big deal. Of course there are exceptions to this, and obviously drugs aren't good for you, but then again, we could go on and talk about alcohol being the biggest killer globally in terms of drug use, but booze is taxed, so that's ok.

Unlike coke and pills, heroin is different. It is virtually impossible to be a casual heroin user, such is its addictiveness. Heroin is destructive, all-consuming and eventually life-threatening. Yet, as the unbelievable lack of resources shows, we don't care and neither do our politicians. Even though it's hard to walk a few feet through an urban area in Ireland without encountering a heroin addict, they are invisible in terms of influence because this government, like most governments before them, does not think junkies matter.

We step over them, we scowl at them, we do impressions of them for laughs, we revile them, we clutch our handbags closer in their presence. To us, the non-heroin user, they are subhuman. We imprison them for doing something to feed the habit we aren't interested in breaking, and then we dose them up once they are locked up. We don't have jails in Ireland; we have internment camps for junkies.

Not only are we content to erase a sizeable proportion of society through the zombie-like confines of heroin addiction, it is official policy to placate them further by basing our treatment programmes on getting heroin addicts addicted methadone. How do you think someone should get off heroin? By glugging a legal drug instead of illegally shooting up its twin? Methadone is not treatment; methadone is our way of pretending we're dealing with the problem. Then, of course, there's the elephant in the room: the uncomfortable fact the vast, vast majority of heroin addicts happen to be from the lowest socio-economic section of our society. How convenient. How perfect for them to matter even less than they already do.

Heroin addiction, and the lifestyle of the addict, is so far removed from most of us, it's hard to relate to a so-called junkie on any terms. It is an awful existence; lolling from fix to fix, the crime, the desperation, the realisation that your life is ruled by dirty little bags of powder, the supreme irony that the name of the drug derived from the German for heroic, when all you are is pathetic. And no one cares if you live or die. Imagine that. Or don't. Just drop your eyes to the ground the next time a junkie shuffles past. Because all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

umullally@tribune.ie