Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not wish to focus on one particular drug, namely, cannabis. There are far worse drugs in society than cannabis. There are drugs that will kill people and obliterate communities. That is factual. Some of the responses are kind of hysterical in terms of how people make observations regarding cannabis use in particular. Broadly speaking, the ongoing battle against drug crime and drug gangs can never be won, given the current policies. Making substances illegal, as all the illicit drugs in question have been, does not make society safer. I will pose this question but I probably will not get an answer. Does making something illegal make it safer? I believe it does not. In fact, it actually drives criminal gangs to fill that vacuum and there is no regulation or control in respect of drugs except the black market. That is the situation we have at the moment.

As regards funding and the drugs task force, the CHO 7 area that I represent, which is quite substantial, accounts for a quarter of the drugs task force. I know from the task force that I am more au faitwith that there has been a culture in recent years in terms of not just that task force, but task forces across the country losing their independence. We need to remember where drug task forces were originally and why they were set up. They were set up because there was an epidemic of drug use in particular working-class areas where it was decimating communities. There had to be a reaction and that reaction was a community-based approach to how to deal with these very complex issues. They stem from socioeconomic disadvantage. Drug task forces have been very influential in the context of reacting but if they lose their independence and community-based element, it will make the problem much worse. It is important that drug task forces do not lose their independence in any guise.