Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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There is so much floating around now in terms of this conversation. What we need to remember is that several different things have to happen in parallel but none should be so attached to the other that the other does not begin. I remind everyone of the earlier conversations about the importance of decriminalisation in terms of not compounding all those other things that have been built on through the past hour and a half of the conversation: poverty, drug trade, education and children.

I am conscious of bringing it back to the fact that certain matters are not dependent on other things happening. It is about making sure we keep bringing it back to that space. Most of us understand the relationship with poverty, but what some people do not understand in general relates to the idea that we are going to somehow intercept the drug trade with regulation. That is sometimes a misstep, to be honest. Who led the poor kids into the drug trade originally? We are always looking for the big bad drug dealer or whatever, when it is actually all the social context that we have been speaking about. If people have no other way to live successfully in a capitalistic world where things are important and education, cars and everything else costs money, what will replace drug dealing if it is removed from communities? None of us want to acknowledge that there is a black market that keeps some of our communities afloat in a way that the State never has. It is a double-edged sword. It is both taking from us and giving to us at the same time.

When we talk about regulation, we have to remember that regulation does not mean that some 50-year-old drug dealer who has only sold drugs since the age of 11 is going to decide that is it and he is going to set up a tech company. It does not mean that the criminality disappears. We have to remember that criminality is born from many different things in terms of social issues. When we are talking about intercepting the powerful drug gangs, we need to be honest that they were once the children who experienced poverty and found their way into a market they thought was going to give them better. What are we offering them? Is there an amnesty? Is there a drug dealer programme?

I remember speaking to the people who were introducing the legal cannabis trade in Colorado. They pointed out that if the State suddenly offers drugs on the market, they are not criminals, but if a person has been doing it in the community for years, he or she is an evil criminal with no way out. Sometimes the conversation is too abstract, rather than being rooted in reality. I am ranting and venting now and I apologise for that. What I am trying to say is that if we get to the stage where we are talking about regulation and not decriminalisation, that is when we need to ground in the alternatives for people who sell drugs, even at the very top. What are we saying that criminality transfers to? These people will not suddenly have a new CV that shows their entrepreneurial skills, which drug dealers have in bucket-loads. They have the skills of all the best entrepreneurs in the world, but they are never going to be able to apply them. That is a big and important conversation that we should have, but the committee should focus on the practical steps we can take. What are the real steps we can take to avoid compounding the harm caused by personal drug use? Of course we can have those other big, creative conversations around the drug trade.

A side point relates to what we put into our own bodies and comparing that with other things. Humans are pleasure-seeking beings and drugs provide pleasure. We also seek avoidance and medication and numbing, and drugs have provided all of those things to us. I refer to using criminal sanctions to somehow battle against what seems to be a human desire in every single community throughout the world, in every type of society, where people seek pleasure through substance use, regardless of whether that substance is illegal. This is something that might need acceptance. We need to accept that is the way it is. If the person does not harm anyone else and that pleasure is being sought within them and they are not taking from someone else, well then that is fine.

I have gone on a bit; I think that happens after listening to everyone's contributions for a while. With regard to the question around decriminalisation, can we have one or two lines that forget the last hour and a half and go back to the citizens' assembly's recommendation on decriminalising all drugs and why that is so important, regardless of all the other things we need to address?