Ms Niamh Eastwood:

I think there is a right to determine what you do with your own body as long as it does not cause harm to anyone else. I have a right to consume alcohol in the evenings if I wish to do so and do not cause harm to anyone else. That is what I think, and I think that sits within that framework of bodily autonomy.

Coming back, a Chathaoirligh, to the earlier points you raised with Professor Stevens, it is really important when we look at policy that we work out what we want to get out of our policy and what our current policies are doing. It is very clear that our current policies are not deterring use but are increasing harms. What policy levers can we put in place to decrease harms, accepting that we may not affect use? We have tried for 50 or 60 years to eradicate and suppress and have a drug-free world. It has not worked. Drug use is exponentially increasing. The markets are booming. The UNODC's annual report on drugs looks like a shareholders' report these days. This is where we are. Can we start to think about mechanisms that reduce use? It is very similar to the conversation about the criminalisation of people who buy sex. What we have seen in Sweden, where that has been introduced, is an increase in harm to sex workers, with their being pushed further away from services and further away from protection, which is exactly what we see with the criminalisation of drug possession. There are great parallels between those two policy positions.

I could go on about longer sentences as well. They are more likely to result in people committing more crimes when they come out of prison. I think there is a right to bodily autonomy. We really need to focus on what policy achieves, and I would like the policy to reduce harms, reduce hospitalisations and make people safer.