Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 10 October 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed)
9:30 am
Mr. Tony Duffin:
We should not allow the best to be the enemy of the good when it comes to implementing this. We have to get on with it. In 2017, it was in the national drugs strategy that we would have a health-led approach, and we are in 2025 and we are having this discussion now. We need to move on and we need to implement a health-led approach to drugs, and that needs to be decided. We have been talking about it for quite some time now. Work is going o,n obviously. I am the chair of strategic implementation group 5, which is looking at the area of alternatives to coercive sanctions. In addition, under the national drugs strategy, there is work towards a health-led approach going on, so that is good.