Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If I make a point given that Professor Stevens mentioned tobacco, which I was going to mention, we have a particular problem in this country with the rise in vaping. Vaping was put forward as a substitute for tobacco and a way to get off it. We now have teenagers starting vaping who have never smoked cigarettes. We have seen issues with commercialising a substance when society decides it will accept it. Ireland, unfortunately, is an outlier. We are also an outlier with regard to alcohol abuse. There are societal differences, as you shift through different populations, and these have to be considered in this discussion.

On the idea of the illicit market, is it not the case that the war on drugs has been trying to cut supply? It is obvious to anybody that is not working. It is also not working at the other end, as Ms Lawlor pointed out, because we have an increase in drug-taking, even among kids who we imagine would be educated.

If drug-taking is widely countenanced in society, has anybody looked at the implications for employment or safety in employment? Are we going to have start testing everybody for drugs when they come in to work in the morning, to understand who might be informally taking drugs and doing so through a regulated source?