Mr. Martin Condon:

I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to speak as witnesses on this important topic. I am here today as one of the directors of Patients for Safe Access. We are a group made up of patients and cannabis experts. We are dedicated to ensuring safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use, research, protecting the rights of medical cannabis patients and ensuring that patients and medical professionals have access to up-to-date scientific evidence.

I am also here as an epilepsy patient who has no other choice but to rely on the black market to access cannabis to treat my condition. This is solely due to an overly restrictive medicinal cannabis access programme, MCAP, leaving me with no option in treating my condition. Due to this, I am labelled a criminal by our society and our justice system. I have a number of criminal convictions for my continued use of cannabis. As a result, I was denied a travel visa to travel to the US where I would have had the opportunity to represent Cork Institute of Technology as part of the students for sensible drug policy society. While there, I was to take part in the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, which was taking place in New York city. I was robbed of this opportunity to learn and grow as a campaigner and to network with world leaders on this issue of drug use. I wish I could say that this was the worst thing that happened to me as a result of cannabis prohibition but it was not. I was unfortunate enough to get an all-expenses-paid stay at the five-star Cork prison at a time when prisoners still had to relieve themselves in a pot in their cells. They would then have to empty those pots the next morning when the cell doors were opened. I had to lie to my daughter, who was only five years old when this happened, about where I was because at that time she knew prison as a place for bad people.

When cannabis was made illegal in Ireland, this was done with good intentions. The latter were much like the good intentions of those who also made condoms illegal and prohibited same-sex relationships. Much has changed since then. Condoms are available throughout society and same-sex relationships are no longer prohibited. We see now that these prohibitions were wrong. They caused much more harm in society and needlessly made criminals out of people who otherwise would have never committed a crime. They say one of the reasons cannabis is illegal is due to its affect on a person's mental health. With that in mind, I ask the committee to consider what affect taking a father away from his young family is going to have, not only on that individual but also on his loved ones and friends. I also ask whether the harms of carrying a criminal conviction and of having been incarcerated outweigh the harms of cannabis.

When brought before the courts, I could never apologise for my use of cannabis because my use of cannabis was beneficial to me. By speaking on my own behalf in court while representing myself for personal possession of cannabis, I hoped that the judge would see I was not a criminal. Sadly, that did not prove to be the case. I wish this was an isolated incident but it was not. We have seen many cases in Ireland where patients are criminalised for self-medicating with cannabis. In one case in West Cork, a patient suffering with chronic pain was criminalised for being in possession of €4 worth of cannabis. This man had his name and address printed in the media, which added more undue stress to his life. What happened did not just impact on his life, it also had an impact on the lives of his family and friends. We have patients who feared being criminalised but could not go without access to cannabis to treat their condition, forced to pack their bags and leave our shores to become medical cannabis refugees in other countries.

I have listed a number of patients in my statement, but I will shorten it because I am aware that I am out of time. Alicia Maher, who is also another director of Patients for Safe Access, suffers with long-term chronic pain as a result of complications from a series of surgeries she had as a teenager. Alicia said cannabis has helped when other pain medications were failing. She had to pack her bags and leave our shores and, as a result, is another of Ireland's medical cannabis refugees. Alicia left Ireland in November 2019 and moved to Alicante, Spain. She received a ministerial licence in May 2020 but because the medicine would not be reimbursed under the medicinal cannabis access programme, she had to stay in Spain. Also, the products available under the MCAP were not sufficient to treat her condition.

There is no reason to criminalise people using or growing cannabis to treat their conditions, and there is certainly no reason to prevent access to cannabis for research and medical use. Cannabis needs to be removed from the misuse of drugs Act and regulated in a similar way to alcohol and tobacco. Patients who need cannabis for health reasons should be given access to cannabis in a safe, quality assured way in the same manner in which they have access to other prescribed medicines. I will finish with a quote from our now Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly: "If a grown adult wants to grow a herb and then smoke it, and there are no negative consequences for other people, then they should be allowed to do that."

I again thank the committee for hearing us on this important issue. We hope our contributions here today will help in some way to further break down the barriers preventing access to cannabis as a medicine and the needless criminalisation of people in Ireland.