Dr. Richard Healy:

When we are talking about decriminalisation and changing contemporary drug policy in Ireland, there is a tendency to put decriminalisation and the Portuguese model up on a pedestal, as if it is almost a perfect model. If you really look at the statistics, it did not have any impact on the number of people using drugs but it had a huge impact on the harms of drugs, in that rates of hepatitis C, HIV and so on dropped. We also need to think about the fact that current drug policy has caused more harms than the actual substances themselves, in my opinion. I will say that again. Drug policy has caused more harms than drugs themselves. It is urgent we change this straight away. As Dr. Cullen and everybody else have said, there are a number of models around the world that we can learn from, not replicate but learn from and cherry-pick and come up with something that works for this country and makes things better for everybody.