Barry Ward (Fine Gael)
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I am actually very sympathetic to much of what has been said here. As somebody who works in the criminal justice system, primarily as a criminal defence barrister, I come across people in different categories in regard to drugs offences. Obviously, we are talking about people in a particular category, namely, possession for personal use. I am extremely alive to what has been said about the criminalisation of individuals who make a personal choice, be that for their own personal enjoyment of for the reasons that have been outlined by Patients for Safe Access either. I understand entirely what has been said in that regard.

We are losing the war on drugs. Not only that, it has become a war of attrition. If we think about the amount of money we spend fighting the kind of cases the witnesses are talking about and what could be done with that money, even if never left the criminal justice system and was reinvested in An Garda Síochána, in particular in diversion programmes or programmes to deal with crime in other areas outside of drugs, we would do a huge service to the country.

That said, it is not that simple. One of the major problems I have with a policy that involves blanket decriminalisation of cannabis or a larger spectrum of drugs is that at the moment they are bound up with criminal organisations. There is an inextricable link between the organised crime that is providing the drugs and the drugs themselves. It is not the case that when a patient, for legitimate reasons, decides to obtain drugs that there are not victims as a result of that. That is the difficulty I have.

Other people will make the argument about the slippery slope and all of the rest. Leaving that aside, can the witnesses tell us how the logistics of this would work? Let us consider what would happen if we said in the morning that cannabis for personal use is okay. Who would provide it thereafter? Who would profit from that? We could put a place a regulatory regime; I would have no difficulty with that. More importantly, what we do to prevent a situation where the country becomes a de factosource for the international trafficking of drugs?