Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 27 June 2024

Committee on Drugs Use

Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Michael McNamaraMichael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I take that argument. Professor Stevens posited sexual offences crimes as an example and explained why it is not a comparator. Relatively recently in Ireland we criminalised end users of prostitution. As a criminologist, is that something the professor would comment on? There is a debate as to whether people who provide sexual services for money are coerced or whether it is a free market they enter into, but according to some arguments at least, it is people deciding what they do with their own bodies and then the state intervening.