Professor Catherine Comiskey:

As a researcher, my opinion is that we need more independent research, but I would not wait until the strategy was written, because we have a strategy. In that strategy, one of the actions is conducting more research, and part of that research is a national rehabilitation study. We could look at the decriminalisation and do some research on that. We have already said we are going to look at the question of where we send people if we do decriminalise drugs. We do not know which forms of rehabilitation work and which do not work, because that study, which is in the current strategy, was never acted upon. It needs to be acted upon as a matter of urgency. I suggest that the committee's next step is to do independent research on decriminalisation involving a longitudinal study and include the question of where we send these people if we do adopt this health model. We know treatment works. What about rehabilitation?