Professor Bobby Smyth:

My response to that would refer back to alcohol. We regulate alcohol and the quantity of alcohol is stated on the bottle. The Deputy appears to be questioning whether we could do the same for drugs as if that system is working or is associated with low rates of harm. Alcohol kills more people each year than all illegal drugs combined. In the national drug-related deaths index and the drug poisoning data, the substance that tops the list in those deaths is alcohol. That should remind us that simply legalising and regulating access to a substance certainly does not eliminate harms. It suggests to me that one does not even reduce them and may actually increase them. As one normalises the behaviour one massively increases the pool of the population who use that substance, as is the case with alcohol. Some 80% of Irish adults use alcohol whereas only 8% in any given year will use any of the illegal substances.

The Deputy used the term "war on drugs". That is an unfair characterisation of Ireland's drug policy over the last couple of decades. Drug policy is now led by the Department of Health. To say it is waging a war on drugs is unfair. It is a reference that people who support drug legalisation regularly use. It is a smear on European drug policy and relates, obviously, to the policies adopted in the United States half a century ago. It is not really relevant to the modern discourse, which is health-led.