Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 13 June 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use: Discussion
9:30 am
Mr. Graham O'Neill:
I will come in quickly on that to maybe give a bit of insight into the feeling around the room at the time. I will try to keep it really brief. My basic understanding of it, and I think I may speak for some of the members of the assembly as well, is that we do not want someone who is using drugs for personal use to be put in front of a judge or dealt with in that way. The whole point is that we want to them to be taken out of that method. From the presentations we received, it was clear access to drugs does not stop because you go into a prison system or anything like that. In some instances and in some presentations we were led to believe that it is actually sometimes easier to obtain drugs and it does not help the addiction to be dealt with in that criminal manner. It was that whole point of taking people out of that system of being put in front of a judge and divert them to that health-led approach.