Dr. Bernard Kenny:

We very much take the approach that, as we said before, addiction is a chronic relapsing condition, so we treat it like that. We would not be in favour of having a limited number of strikes where a person is caught in possession because if we look at the disease model of addiction, the very nature of it is people will have periods of recovery and unfortunately many people will relapse at times in their lives. Taking that on board, we would support in those situations that they would continue to be linked in with an appropriate healthcare provider, counselling service, talk therapy, psychotherapy or whatever is needed. That includes even residential care if warranted.

We would not support hard lines in that respect.