Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

I wanted to build a little on the point Professor Stevens made about the distinction between possession and other offences. Something that is key here in the policing context is the difference between police powers surrounding possession and those surrounding supply and sale. Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act relates to stop and search, for example, on suspicion of drug possession, which is a low evidentiary threshold. The police also have access to section 15, stop and search on suspicion of sale and supply, with a higher evidentiary threshold. In response to the concern about having the policing tools to deal with these issues that are affecting communities, which are very real and very serious, section 15 already provides the Garda with power to address the more serious drug offending. Section 3 is operationally necessary for tackling supply and relates to the more day-to-day possession offences. Keeping section 3 is fundamentally incompatible with the move towards decriminalisation. It essentially enables routine, discretionary stops that rely on the discretion of police officers in respect of personal possession. In practice, this functions as a kind of gateway for broader policing activities, the police being able to use that power to find other sorts of examples of offences within the context of low-threshold, high-volume enforcement. It expands police contact without addressing serious harm. That is in contrast to the aims of decriminalisation to reduce stigma and reduce criminal justice contact for possession. Section 3 preserves the policing of possession and enables this more coercive State contact at the point of use, which would essentially amount to decriminalisation in law alongside criminalisation in policing practice. It is also inconsistent with public health aims to reduce stop-and-search encounters, reduce stigma and surveillance and reduce the entries to the policing system. The section 3 offence in particular is structurally inconsistent with a more public health-led policy.