Professor Alex Stevens:

I would like to speak in favour of the very first thing the Senator said, which was that despite all the complexities we have been discussing, especially the possible options of regulation, decriminalisation itself is a fairly simple step to take. Ms Eastwood and I have written an article called "A modest proposal to decriminalise the simple possession of drugs" in the context of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act, which is not dissimilar from the equivalent Irish Act. We recommended the simple removal from that legislation of the offence of simple possession without intent to supply. That does not depend on doing any of the other things. It does not mean we do not want to do those other things, like reducing poverty and improving drug education and informal education for young people, but it is not dependent on doing those things. By removing the offence of simple possession from the law, we could reduce the harms we are deliberately doing to people by criminalising them. What we know from the evidence is that we would not expect that to increase use or harms of drugs. Then we could have that more elaborate conversation about what else to do.