Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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Apologies have been received from Deputy Devine and Senator Nicole Ryan. I am pleased to open the 23rd public meeting of this committee and the seventh session of our legal issues module. I welcome Ms Julie Hannah, lecturer at the University of Essex law school and human rights centre and director of the international centre on human rights and drugs policy; Dr. Bisi Akintoye, solicitor and lecturer in criminology and criminal justice; Professor Julia Buxton, professor of justice studies at Liverpool John Moores University; Ms Marie Nougier, head of research and communication at the International Drug Policy Consortium; and Professor Alex Stevens of the centre for criminological research at the University of Sheffield law school.

Before we begin I must give a note on privilege. I remind witnesses and members of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. Members of the committee attending remotely must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House. This is due to the constitutional requirement that, in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where Parliament has chosen to sit. In that regard, I ask any members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm, prior to making their contributions, that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

As agreed, witnesses will each have five minutes to deliver their opening statements to allow sufficient time for questions and answers with members. If necessary, further and more detailed information can be submitted to the clerk to the committee for circulation to members.

I invite Ms Hannah to deliver her opening statement.

Ms Julie Hannah:

I thank the Chair, members of the committee and distinguished colleagues for the invitation. I am sorry I cannot be with them in person.

I am a lecturer at the law school and human rights centre at the University of Essex and a director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, the only academic centre currently dedicated to research and teaching on the intersections of human rights law and international drug control law. I am a co-author of the international guidelines on human rights and drug policy, alongside my fellow co-sponsors, the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, WHO, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR. I am also a co-author of the recently launched guidance note on decriminalisation, alongside UNAIDS, UNDP, the International Network of People who Use Drugs, and Release. I have had the privilege and honour to engage with governments and communities around the world in building technical, policy and legal reform work towards rights-based drug policy. It is an honour to be here at what I see as a historic moment for Ireland as it explores democratic solutions to the harms of criminalisation, particularly for marginalised communities.

I would like briefly to reflect on the significance of the task before Ireland and to introduce two documents that will be especially useful to the committee's work, namely, the international guidelines on human rights and drug policy and the new guidance note on decriminalisation, and then to offer one brief reflection on my work in Brazil on why decriminalisation, important as it is, must be joined up with a broader vision of rights and social inclusion.

I want to emphasise that this is not simply a technical policy discussion. Drug policy can often be treated as an ordinary matter of policymaking - legislation, enforcement, sometimes health services and sometimes social programmes. To me, human rights are something different. They are not just another technical consideration. They are about real lives, supporting communities and protecting human dignity. They offer a deeper normative framework that should guide every policy choice that is made. That is why it matters to make human rights explicit in this process. It is a way of framing drug policy, directing us towards what matters and away from what does not. It moves us beyond narrow technical language so we can begin to ask different and better questions. Does our approach protect dignity? Does it reduce discrimination? Does it respect autonomy? Does it minimise or eliminate coercion? Does it establish accountability and transparency? Does it help to build the conditions in which people and communities can actually live safely and in dignity? It forces us to ask what we value in our responses to drug use. Do we prioritise health and human rights or do we allow outdated punitive models to persist? The answer to these questions will define the future of drug policy in Ireland.

Certain lines should never be crossed. These lines must be human rights standards, not arbitrary drug control standards. This is why the international guidelines on human rights and drug policy are important and useful to Ireland. They are important not because they create new rights, which they do not, but because they reflect and interpret the existing body of international human rights law in the specific context of drug policy. They help make visible what established human rights obligations mean in practice for law, policy, services and systems working with people who use drugs and people in situations of social exclusion.

The guidance note on decriminalisation is useful for a similar reason. It reflects decades of learning from decriminalisation processes, many of which the committee will learn about today from my distinguished colleagues, in different parts of the world and places that learning alongside current human rights standards and lived experiences of communities of people who use drugs. It is a practical tool. It helps explain what decriminalisation is, what it is not, and what foundational principles should guide such processes if reform is to be meaningful, effective and rights-based in practice. One of its key messages is that there is no one-size-fits-all model for decriminalisation. Different countries will take different paths, shaped by their own legal systems, histories and social realities. Even so, there are core principles that should guide these processes, such as the explicit recognition of rights, non-discrimination, no coercion, participation, accountability, the decriminalisation of all drugs and respecting the interdependence of rights. These are not abstract values; they are practical organising principles. That matters in Ireland, because what is at stake here is not only the harms associated with drug use but the harms associated with existing drug control policy. It is the documented human rights violations created by criminalisation itself: discrimination, social exclusion, coercion, surveillance and privacy breaches, and repeated, unnecessary contact with overly punitive systems. Those harms are not distributed evenly. They fall most heavily on those already pushed to the margins, especially people who are homeless.

If Ireland is serious about a public health approach and one that is based on human rights, which I think and hope it is, it is important to be clear about what that means. A rights-based response cannot simply mean attaching health language to a criminal law framework. If punitive control remains, then there is a real risk that punishment is simply relocated rather than removed and the human rights risks and consequences remain. A human rights approach also means that engagement with services must be voluntary.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I am sorry, Ms Hannah, we will have to stop there. She is a little over time and we need to ensure-----

Ms Julie Hannah:

Okay.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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We will come back and make sure she has enough time to finish later. I invite Dr. Akintoye to give her presentation. She has five minutes.

Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

I thank the Chair and committee for the invitation to contribute to this important discussion. I am a solicitor and lecturer in criminology and criminal justice based in London. I am also a trustee of Release, a UK-based charity and advocacy organisation focused on drug policy reform and legal advice. My research draws on empirical work on policing, stop and search, drugs and racial disproportionality in the UK. I look at the intergenerational experience of drug policing on marginalised communities.

My central argument is that the harms associated with drugs are significantly produced and intensified by the legal and policing frameworks through which the state responds to them. In particular, current approaches rely heavily on enforcement practices that are both unequal in their application and limited in their effectiveness. In practice, this has produced a heavily enforcement-led system in which drug policing, particularly stop and search, has become one of the most routine forms of state intervention in everyday life for marginalised people.

In the UK context, drug control is primarily structured through the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. While this legislation was introduced with the aim of reducing harm, in practice it has entrenched a highly punitive, enforcement-led approach that relies heavily on police powers. Over time, this has shaped drug use as a criminal issue rather than a public health one. A similar dynamic can be observed in Ireland under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, as amended. This framework continues to criminalise possession and supply and provides the legal basis for drug enforcement practices by An Garda Síochána. While there have been important policy discussions around more health-led approaches, the legislative framework remains fundamentally prohibitionist and enforcement-led. The key issue is how this legislation operates on the ground and how drug policing is experienced by the communities it affects the most.

Drug laws provide the foundation for a wide range of policing powers. In England and Wales, drugs remain the primary driver of stop and search, accounting for roughly two thirds of all searches. In Ireland, while the legal powers differ, drug enforcement similarly relies on discretionary policing under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Although comprehensive ethnicity data is limited in the Irish context, existing evidence and oversight reports have raised concerns about the concentration of policing in already marginalised communities. This enforcement is not applied evenly. Black people are several times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people in England and Wales, with disparities rising to over seven times for certain types of searches. These disparities persist over time and remain insufficiently explained by policing agencies despite the fact that survey data consistently shows that drug use rates are broadly similar across ethnic groups. In short, this disparity cannot be explained by differences in offending. Instead, it reflects how suspicion is constructed and applied in practice.

Drug enforcement has long acted as a proxy for social control and racial governance, constructing the figure of the criminalised black subject as a threat to social order. These legacies continue to shape the assumptions, language and practices of contemporary drug policing. Drug legislation emerges as part of a broader legacy of racialised social control and social exclusion that disproportionately impacts minoritised communities.

The disproportionate targeting of marginalised communities through stop-and-search practices for suspected drug possession, often without legal justification, is a contemporary iteration of this long-standing dynamic. Today, drug-related stop-and-search remains the most common use of these powers. To put it simply, drug enforcement regulates populations, shaping who is subject to surveillance, suspicion and intervention. Because drug possession is relatively easy to suspect but difficult to disprove on the street, it becomes an effective justification for discretionary police intervention, often around the smell of cannabis. In practice, this turns drug enforcement into a key mechanism through which racialised suspicion is produced and reproduced in line with existing biases within operational policing. The consequences are significant. Even where no arrest is made, police encounters can be intrusive and stigmatising, particularly for young people and vulnerable groups. When enforcement does lead to criminalisation, the long-term impacts include criminal records, reduced access to employment and education and deepening mistrust in state institutions. Crucially, these harms are not offset by clear evidence of effectiveness. The data is clear that more stop-and-search does not reduce crime, even as it draws scores of young people and vulnerable groups into the criminal justice system. More broadly, there is limited and contested evidence that increasing drug enforcement or the use of stop-and-search has a meaningful impact on reducing serious violence or drug supply. Reviews find that the effects of stop-and-search on crime reduction are, at best, moderate and highly variable, with limited evidence of sustained impact on serious violence or drug markets.

This points to a fundamental problem. Current drug policy relies on coercive policing powers that are both unequally applied and demonstrably limited in effectiveness. From a policy perspective, this should prompt serious reconsideration of both policing practices and the legislative framework itself. Ireland has already taken some limited steps in the direction of moving towards alternative approaches. For example, Portugal's decriminalisation model, introduced in 2001, removed criminal penalties for personal possession and redirected individuals towards health and support services. Since then, Portugal has seen reductions in drug-related deaths, HIV transmission and problematic drug use without significant increases in overall consumption. In the Ireland context, measures remain constrained and continue to operate within a broader system of criminalisation. The key lesson is shifting the underlying logic of drug policy from punishment to public health and reducing criminalisation and marginalisation. For Ireland, there is a clear opportunity to avoid reproducing patterns of unequal enforcement seen in other jurisdictions. Based on the evidence, there are several areas the committee may wish to consider: first, reducing reliance on policing as the primary response-----

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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Pardon me, Dr. Akintoye. We have gone one minute over time. I will stop you, if that is okay, and come back to you later in the session. I am sure there will be lots of questions.

Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

Of course. That is no problem.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank Dr. Akintoye. I now invite Professor Buxton to deliver her opening statement.

Professor Julia Buxton:

I thank the committee very much for the invitation. My name is Julia Buxton. I am a professor of justice studies at Liverpool John Moores University. I was also very fortunate to receive a four-year British Academy global professorship. As part of the global professorship, my project was focused on the really dramatic transformation of international drug markets.

The patterns of shift and change that I see in the international drug market really date to the 1990s, with the collapse of Soviet communism, globalisation and the emergence of the Internet really delivering massive external shocks to the United Nations's post-war drug control system. What we are seeing currently is fragmentation, diffusion and digitalisation - all deeply disruptive trends, which were accelerated intensively during the Covid lockdown. These shifts, which we are seeing in the international drug economy, are creating major problems for all countries and for the traditional models of drug war enforcement, prevention and treatment services. States are impacted very differently, however, and islands, in particular, have serious, more complex challenges than land bordered states. As a result of that, I did some of my research in small islands, including Iceland, Malta and the very small island of the United Kingdom.

I will discuss the transformation that we see currently under way, and I hope this helps the committee contextualise some of the legal and policy changes that are being embraced by other countries. I will do this very quickly. First of all, looking at the supply side and the things people really need to be alert for in Ireland, there are real, significant transformations in terms of supply and distribution chains and the organisation of supply and distribution. We no longer live in an age of cartels. Crime group structures are evolving and the organisation of drug crime is evolving. We no longer live in an era of Pablo Escobar, the Medellin king of cocaine, or Khun Sa, the Myanmar king of heroin. It is the end of these kinds of hierarchical, structured criminal groups with the old bonds of discipline and loyalty controlling drugs from source to street and, usually, the state. What we have today instead are cartelitos. These are flat, agile, small and ill-disciplined, and they are essentially franchises. They are based around prison gangs and urban gangs spread across Europe and Latin America. They are digitally connected, transnationalised and have diverse portfolios. They no longer focus only on the drugs, as used to be the case with the old cartels. For example, they focus in particular on far more lucrative aspects of the informal economies, such as guns, gold, probably diesel right now and also people. In this respect, drugs are simply not that lucrative. I would like to emphasise at this point in time that we are seeing wholesale and retail prices at historic lows for the majority of the drug plants, primarily coca for cocaine, opium poppy and cannabis, and we have record rates of drug plant cultivation. Therefore, what we are seeing right now, and the real danger we are all facing, is that these new crime group partnerships shift bulk, high-purity and very cheap cocaine. One of the particular trends I have been tracking has been the emergence of narco-submarines in order to avoid our surveillance and interception.

This is linked to the second important shift, which is rise of the synthetic market. What we are seeing is real competition between the plant markets and the synthetic markets. This is really changing the profiles of countries internationally. What we used to understand as supply states are now consumer states and what we used to understand as the consumer states are now supply and trafficking states. In that respect, I would certainly cite countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom, which are now emerging as trafficking countries.

Turning very quickly to the demand side, social media dealing, the Internet and crypto markets are radically transforming the way people obtain their drugs and intoxicating substances. We are seeing record levels of drug use internationally. This is despite draconian and punitive anti-drug laws. It should be stressed, however, as acknowledged by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, that the majority of people - around 75% to 80% - who consume drugs do so moderately and without causing harm to themselves or to others, as we see in alcohol markets. However, the key trends we are seeing are in terms of demand, increase of women's use of drugs, increase in plyadministeratve and polydrug use and also niche cultures such as chemsex, and online drug purchases are booming.

How are countries responding? I would say, in the very limited amount of time that we have left, that it is lopsided and limited. This is because even though we do see what we consider to be some quite dramatic changes, for example, adult regulated cannabis markets in countries such as Canada and the cannabis clubs in places like Malta, all countries remain completely constrained by the UN drug treaties. The changes we have seen to date, whether this is in relation to harm reduction or legalisation and decriminalisation initiatives, are all at the margins of the prevailing UN drug conventions. As a result, I would argue that many of these countries are in a treaty trap so while I am happy to take all questions on some of these initiatives we have seen, say, pharmaceutical supply, drug testing and decriminalisation, I do remain deeply concerned that these are actually creating new forms of exclusion and reinforcing the iatrogenic characteristics of drug policy whereby the harm caused is far worse than the problem.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank Professor Buxton so much for her statement. I now invite Ms Nougier to deliver her opening statement. She is very welcome.

Ms Marie Nougier:

I thank everyone very much for the invitation. My name is Marie Nougier, and I am the head of research and communications at the International Drug Policy Consortium, IDPC, which is a global network of over 200 civil society organisations that come together to promote drug policies grounded in social justice and human rights.

Over the past two decades, the IDPC network has been documenting the devastating harms of punitive drug control on health, widespread stigma and discrimination in access to healthcare, education and employment and high levels of violence and abuse against people who use drugs. In order to mitigate these harms, a growing number of jurisdictions have opted for alternative policy options, including decriminalisation, which will be the focus of my intervention today.

Globally, today, 69 jurisdictions in 39 countries have now decriminalised at least one internationally controlled substance. This is a trend in virtually all regions of the world. The issue is that decriminalisation models vary drastically from one jurisdiction to the other and so do their impacts on public health, human rights and social justice. In fact, some decriminalisation models can be as, or more, harmful than criminalisation. In Russia and Mexico, for example, the threshold quantities allowed are so low that the number of arrests of people who use drugs have actually increased after decriminalisation.

In other models, decriminalisation only serves to perpetuate the historic targeting of marginalised and racialised communities. We have, therefore, identified some key components of what a gold standard of decriminalisation should look like to avoid reinforcing prohibition narratives, and truly embrace a health and rights-based approach to drug policy. Our research also responds to some of the key questions that have been raised in the report of the citizens' assembly, which I hope will be helpful today.

The first question is what should be decriminalised. From a public health perspective, we found that the models that proved to be most effective had decriminalised all substances, and all drug use-related activities, including possession, possession of drug use paraphernalia, self-cultivation and social sharing.

The second question is what should be the response. The premise of decriminalisation is the need to create an enabling environment to ensure voluntary access to systems of care and support. In our research, it quickly became obvious that any sanction can have a detrimental impact on people who use drugs, which can be particularly severe for those most marginalised who remain the target of police interventions. For example, the failure to pay a fine can result in further criminalisation, which, in turn, undermines the purpose of decriminalisation. At the same time, data from the UN has clearly demonstrated that sanctions have absolutely no deterrent effect on levels of drug use, so our gold standard is that no sanction should be applied.

Third, while access to health, harm reduction and treatment services are absolutely essential, it is also important to recognise that people who use drugs may face a wide range of other issues, and that they might need additional support to address those as well. This can include housing and tackling gender-based violence or childhood trauma. This is the approach that was adopted by Portugal and other countries.

The citizens' assembly asks specifically whether there should be a number of times a person should be diverted to health interventions. The answer is "No" and, importantly, diversion should always remain voluntary. Evidence shows that coercive treatment does not work. Instead, ensuring good co-ordination and adequate funding for low-threshold harm reduction services and peer support will be important for people who may not be willing or able to enter treatment.

Fourth, the decriminalisation model should include the expungement of previous convictions for activities now considered as no longer being criminalised. Fifth, decriminalisation requires training for a wide range of public authorities to ensure implementation and adherence. That applies to both de jureand de facto decriminalisation models. Sixth, it is absolutely critical to meaningfully involve people who use drugs in the design and implementation of decriminalisation policies to avoid unintended negative consequences.

To conclude, it is important to consider the limits of decriminalisation. While it can result in positive health and social outcomes for people who use drugs and their communities, decriminalisation will not be able to address the toxic supply that has caused so many overdose deaths in several parts of the world, nor will it address the harms associated with the illegal drug supply more generally, including the increasing levels of violence that we have recently witnessed in Europe and elsewhere. Alongside decriminalisation, a serious conversation should be had around responsible legal regulation. This is a policy option that is now proposed, and encouraged, by various UN entities, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Development Programme and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank Ms Nougier. Finally, I invite Professor Alex Stevens to deliver his opening statement. He is welcome back.

Professor Alex Stevens:

I thank the Chair and members for the opportunity to discuss diversion and the decriminalisation of drug possession. I am a professor of criminology at the University of Sheffield. I am a past president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, and I used to be a member of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. I also co-authored a report for the Irish Department of Justice and Equality, in 2018, on alternatives to criminalisation for drug possession in a previous consideration of the fact that it was six years ago suggested that drug policy reform is indeed a marathon and not a sprint.

In my comments, I would like to focus on the differences between diversion and decriminalisation, which are often confused. I will briefly outline the results of a large evaluation of police-led drug diversion schemes that I recently led in England. My written statement includes some evidence on the effects of diversion and decriminalisation in other countries. I will skip over them in my oral statement in order to save time but I am very happy to answer questions on the international evidence. I will conclude by talking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of both decriminalisation and diversion, and I will finish with two recommendations for policy in both the UK and Ireland on these issues.

Both diversion and decriminalisation can reduce the harms and costs of criminalising people who use drugs. This is a very good thing because we are inflicting pain, punishment and cost without any justification for it. The harms of criminalisation of people who use drugs are not justified by any commensurate evidence on its effects in reducing drug use or related harms.

We have the opportunity to reduce those harms by diverting or decriminalising people. The difference between them is that decriminalisation removes the offence of possession from criminal law. It is a de jure legal change. That means there is no longer a criminal offence of the possession of drugs although it may still be an offence to produce, import or supply them. In contrast, diversion does not remove the criminal offence from the criminal law. Rather, it involves diverting people to educative or therapeutic alternatives, instead of criminalising, prosecuting and punishing them.

We recently concluded a big study on diversion that was led by police forces in England. It included over 60,000 people who had committed drug or drug-related offences. We interviewed over 220 people about their experiences either delivering or receiving these types of diversion schemes. The main finding of our study was that diverting people who are caught in possession of drugs is more effective than criminalising them in reducing the risk of offending. There was a 12% reduced risk of reoffending among people who were diverted. Diversion is also cheaper than criminalising people. It saves money both by avoiding the costs of prosecution but also because there is less cost in future as there is less re-offending. We found that in England diversion is not being used as much as it could be. Indeed, only a minority of the people who were eligible to be diverted were being diverted partly because the police retained discretion and, quite often, chose not to divert people who they did not consider worthy of diversion, even though these people were formally eligible to be diverted.

When policymakers choose between diversion and decriminalisation, they can consider that diversion may be easier to implement because it does not require a change to the law but diversion is more costly and intrusive than decriminalisation, and more intrusive, for example, of people's human rights to liberty and non-stigmatising treatment. That is because that law is still in place and the opportunity remains to use the law to do the sort of things that Dr. Akintoye talked about, which is to apply in a discriminatory and stigmatising fashion. We should also consider that neither diversion nor decriminalisation address the harms related to illicit supply, about which Professor Buxton talked. These harms will continue if we do not regulate the market.

Having considered and researched these issues over many years, and conducted many research studies, I would like to make the following two recommendations both to the Irish Government and, because the laws are so similar, to the UK Government. First, decriminalise the simple possession of any type of controlled drug. There are no benefits, which we know from research, from criminalising possession that outweigh its costs and harms. Second, I recommend the introduction of diversion schemes for people who commit other offences - largely thefts or low-level dealing, which is sometimes known as "user dealing" - that are related to their own substance misuse problems. If well-designed and implemented, these diversion schemes, for that wider group of offences, can reduce the costs of dealing with these offences and increase access to effective treatment and social support, which are likely to reduce reoffending and increase the public health outcomes of drug policy. I thank members for their time.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank Professor Stevens. I will hand over to members. They have seven minutes each for questions. Deputy Ó Murchú will go first.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agaibh go léir. Members would need 70 minutes to go back over an awful lot of that.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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The Deputy has seven minutes.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Yes. I realise that.

Professor Buxton referred to the old scenario whereby Pablo Escobar controlled every element.

It is simple from the point of view of taking him out of it and there is an impact on supply. I saw a documentary on Netflix or something. Some mid-level drug dealer said that his father had been a reasonable sized drug dealer and got 20 years. On the basis that he is operating low key, he will only get seven years if he is caught. It is that idea that it broke itself up. It is the most agile marketplace in the world. I am interested in what Professor Buxton means about the treaty trap and what she calls the cartelitosand how they are broken up. As much as they have entered the fray in many other businesses, they are still able to get a steady supply of drugs. This problem is not going anywhere from the point of view of knocking off supply.

Professor Julia Buxton:

The treaty trap I refer to is that our countries remain part of the United Nations conventions on drugs. There are the 1961, 1971 and 1988 treaties. What you see with countries that have so far reformed or attempted to adjust their criminalisation model is that they are still working within the international system of criminalisation. I spent a lot of time in Canada and went to a lot of the cannabis shops to observe how people were interacting with them. However, the reality is that the majority of people using these cannabis shops were white, middle-class and middle-aged people. The illicit market continues to function, but the punishment is more severe for operating in the illicit market when there is the option of a regulated market. We see that a lot of these countries that have embraced some level of reform have also tightened up in other areas. There is tougher trafficking legislation, and it is tougher in other aspects.

The treaty trap really refers to the fact that the 1961 single convention, to my mind, remains an obstacle to effective reform because it is a constant source of pushback for moral and opposition groups that do not want to see change to drug laws. As long as we have the 1961 convention and the conventions are unchanged, then countries are going to be able to reverse these reform trends and take us back to a criminalisation model, which is one of the greatest public policy failures of our time.

I turn to the cartelitos. I agree with the points raised by the Deputy and Netflix has been a big introduction to the world of cartels for my students. Cartelitos is a term coined by Bruce Bagley. It refers to this fragmentation of larger crime groups, but the bonds are not the same any more. There is not the same family or blood loyalty and that kind of thing. It is purely economic exchange. We have groups moving between the formal and informal economies and between drugs and gold, which is more lucrative for Latin American crime groups right now.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is localised in every two-bit group. Let us say a successful Garda operation, for want of a better term, takes out a reasonably sized street dealer. He is generally replaced by six minnows and whatever else. It is happening at every level within it.

Professor Julia Buxton:

It is also accelerating. That is the danger right now. The more police enforcement operations we have, the more we see this fragmentation and diffusion of the drug markets. What we need to see is the Garda and the police in the UK actually evaluating the impact of these seizure operations in terms of violence, drug prices and drug-related harms.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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They need to look at what is working. The thing is that people still want to see serious, dangerous and violent criminals dealt with. It is about not overselling the idea of decriminalisation. It is part of something that will hopefully work.

My next question is for Professor Stevens. He talked about diversion programmes. What sort of diversion programme are we talking about that is gold plated and best practice? Does he take into account the idea that criminal gangs, on the basis of the law, engage really young kids through grooming and so forth? I know there are organisations like Escapeline in Britain. Has anyone put something in play that is having a real impact?

Professor Alex Stevens:

The diversion schemes we looked at, which dealt with drug possession offences, were mostly using one-off educative sessions. Those could be provided in online settings, although some were using online packages, which people would go through. Some were using in-person groups so an appointment would be made and people would come together as a group to discuss. The providers of these groups worked out that it is not really effective to have a general group for all drugs. The needs and information levels people already have are quite different between first-time users of cannabis and older experienced users of cocaine. They split out the types of education they are providing to people involved in these sessions. The evidence we got from the interviews was that some people found those sessions useful and learned things they did not know. However, many of the more experienced drug users did not find much use in the sessions because they already knew about drugs and the harms as they seen some of them among their friends. They were fairly confident they knew how to protect themselves. For them, the main benefit of this was not criminalising them, which is a good benefit because it is less expensive and it is more effective not to criminalise them.

People have got excited in recent years about young people being exploited in drug markets, but it is something that has been going on for decades. It is important to remember that there is not a clear divide between offenders and victims in these markets. They are quite often the same people. People who have been exposed to violence at a young age are more likely to become the violent offenders of the future. We need early intervention that is supportive and not punitive towards the children who are most likely to get involved in these markets. Punishing them for their first steps into the illicit drug market is likely to push them further into it rather than keep them out of it.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I thank all of the witnesses for their contributions. The citizens' assembly recommended decriminalising. It did not recommend legalising and regulating drugs, so we have a significant challenge. The international perspectives are valuable and help inform our thoughts on this. When they talk about the cartels and the international global context it is important that we recognise how the world has changed, and how drugs present in our societies has changed. Yesterday, on a suburban road in Dublin an 11-year-old kid picked up a gun that had been thrown by somebody who was escaping from gardaí, who were pursuing that individual because he was a low-level drug dealer, or probably was. It is everywhere. It is in all of our communities across the country and is a big challenge.

The human rights argument for the drug user is very compelling, but there is a counter argument, which is the human rights of the child playing in the street, the parent leaving their kid out to play on the green and the challenge to their human rights of that drug activity. It is strongly felt by people across the country that their communities are being destroyed by what may be low-level drug dealing in the global scheme of things. However, when it is happening on your doorstep, outside your school or in your local park that is unacceptable. It is challenging. Our policing model in Ireland is different from those of the UK and the US. We have one national force. In the UK, I think there are more than 40 police forces and I guess there are thousands in the US as there are multiple forces. Gardaí are guardians of the peace. That is what An Garda Síochána means. They are seen as the guardians of our peace. They tell us that we need to continue with and increase diversion rather than going the decriminalisation route. One of the diversion pilots that has been in operation here, for far too long as a pilot in my opinion, is the Drug Treatment Court. Have the witnesses looked at the Drug Treatment Court? I see Professor Stevens is nodding. When he recommends looking at and increasing diversion, is that the type of diversion he is referring to?

Professor Alex Stevens:

No, it is not, because drug treatment courts are post-court diversion.

What I was referring to more was pre-arrest diversion. The issues the Senator has raised are obviously real issues of concern but they are not really relevant to the question of diversion or decriminalisation. The decriminalisation the citizens' assembly recommended would not affect the market for illicit substances. It would not increase it because there is no evidence that decriminalisation increases drug use, and it will not reduce it because decriminalising possession does not address the harms of the market. While those issues would persist, they would not be increased by decriminalising drug possession. What decriminalising drug possession does is respect the human rights of people who use drugs and reduce the costs of dealing with them and the reoffending that is caused by punishment, which causes reoffending. We need to think separately about the harms of the illicit market compared to the harms done to people who are in possession of these substances. Those two sets of harms need to be considered separately. Decriminalisation does not do anything to either increase or decrease the harms of the illicit market. That requires a separate solution.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I am accepting that point, but what does Professor Stevens say then about where the diversion happens?

Professor Alex Stevens:

The diversion should happen as soon as possible in the system. The earlier you divert people, the more money you save and the less harm you do to them. The easiest way to do that is to de jure decriminalise the possession of drugs so that people cannot be exposed to the harms and human rights abuses that both Dr. Akintoye and Ms Hannah have referred to.

Ms Marie Nougier:

I just wanted to react on the drug treatment courts because this is something that we have been documenting quite a lot, in particular in the Americas, in the US but also across Latin America. The conclusion from most of the researchers who have been documenting these is that they are quite helpful in a way. If you need to select a mechanism for diversion, it is not the one that should be recommended. It contains a strong element of coercion into treatment, which in and of itself is an issue, because you basically get people who use drugs into that system. As we know, one ten people who use drugs will develop a drug dependency. The rest of them will not need treatment. You basically ask them to choose prison or treatment, and of course they will want to choose treatment. You are wasting a lot of resources in getting people who do not need treatment into treatment. There is also a strong judgmental, moralising aspect to drug treatment courts, very often, which obviously is not helpful in a moment where we are trying to destigmatise and promote social inclusion and a health-focused approach to drug use. From our perspective, drug treatment courts are not the right option. As Professor Stevens said, you would want a system that diverts people from the criminal justice system as early as possible. Drug treatment courts bring people into the criminal justice system. There is a long process, so it also wastes a lot of public spending for minimal outcomes in terms of health and social inclusion. I just wanted to put that out there. I see others also have some thoughts about it.

Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

I wanted to build a little on the point Professor Stevens made about the distinction between possession and other offences. Something that is key here in the policing context is the difference between police powers surrounding possession and those surrounding supply and sale. Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act relates to stop and search, for example, on suspicion of drug possession, which is a low evidentiary threshold. The police also have access to section 15, stop and search on suspicion of sale and supply, with a higher evidentiary threshold. In response to the concern about having the policing tools to deal with these issues that are affecting communities, which are very real and very serious, section 15 already provides the Garda with power to address the more serious drug offending. Section 3 is operationally necessary for tackling supply and relates to the more day-to-day possession offences. Keeping section 3 is fundamentally incompatible with the move towards decriminalisation. It essentially enables routine, discretionary stops that rely on the discretion of police officers in respect of personal possession. In practice, this functions as a kind of gateway for broader policing activities, the police being able to use that power to find other sorts of examples of offences within the context of low-threshold, high-volume enforcement. It expands police contact without addressing serious harm. That is in contrast to the aims of decriminalisation to reduce stigma and reduce criminal justice contact for possession. Section 3 preserves the policing of possession and enables this more coercive State contact at the point of use, which would essentially amount to decriminalisation in law alongside criminalisation in policing practice. It is also inconsistent with public health aims to reduce stop-and-search encounters, reduce stigma and surveillance and reduce the entries to the policing system. The section 3 offence in particular is structurally inconsistent with a more public health-led policy.

Ms Julie Hannah:

Just to agree with and build on what everyone who has spoken before me said, I will draw the Senator's attention to a few pieces of research that have been done around drug courts over the years. The US-based Social Science Research Council put out a fairly comprehensive study on drug courts, urging governments to move away from that model based on the evidence they reviewed. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime has recently produced a publication around drug courts in west Africa. From the UN human rights system, drug courts have been raised as a concern by a range of UN human rights mechanisms, including the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges. Of course, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has repeatedly cautioned against the use of drug courts over the years because of the human rights issues they both produce and do not eliminate.

In Brazil, which I planned to reflect on a bit in my opening remarks-----

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I am very sorry, Ms Hanna, because I know I cut you off in your opening remarks but we are four minutes over time for Senator Fitzpatrick. I promise that we will get on to Brazil.

Ms Julie Hannah:

Thank you.

Evanne Ní Chuilinn (Fine Gael)
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This is a really interesting discussion. Professor Buxton's role is fascinating. It is almost like not real life, talking about narco-submarines and all that stuff. On the conversation around the treaty difficulties, realistically, what room for manoeuvre do we have in Ireland? What can we actually achieve if we are constrained by that 1961 issue?

Professor Julia Buxton:

I thank the Senator for the compliment that my job was interesting. I think the real challenge is that at the moment, in respect of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, CND, the executive body of the United Nations which oversees drug policy, there is pressure for reform. There is a whole group of reform countries, mainly led by Latin America, which have been really trying to push forward change to the conventions. We did see some initial progress, and discussions around whether there needed to be revision of the treaties or whether the treaties themselves should be scrapped, whether we really need drug treaties and whether we could not instead allocate these responsibilities to areas like development and environment. However, that progress in terms of revising the treaties has been somewhat slowed by the position of the United States, which was very confrontational at the last meetings of the CND. As the members will be aware, a lot of the finances and funding for many drug projects have been cut and the US has obstructed many of the debates within the CND.

Is there space for Ireland to move? There is certainly space for Ireland to be delivering better than is currently the case, saving more lives and reducing the harm. I absolutely agree with the point that was made by Senator Fitzpatrick that people do not want to see their children exposed to the harm. However, we are never going to be able to stop exposing our children to this harm because criminalisation is what is harm-generating. There is infinite room for manoeuvre for Ireland but there has to be an almost constant process of monitoring and evaluation, so we are sure the changes that have been introduced are not creating more harm than good. Ireland has room for manoeuvre, so I ask that it please take the opportunity.

The reason I came here was just to say there is a storm coming and so few of us are prepared for this.

Evanne Ní Chuilinn (Fine Gael)
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Yes. Professor Buxton said that incremental reform is obviously insufficient. What we do not want here is for this to be like a box-ticking exercise and for us to create policy that sits on a shelf and is constrained by existing legislation be that here or in Europe. What kind of a transformative approach can we realistically and genuinely look for in a country like Ireland? Professor Buxton also mentioned the island states and the added difficulties we have.

Professor Julia Buxton:

I spent some time in Iceland and did some research in Malta, which has introduced adult-regulated cannabis markets and cannabis clubs. The real challenge is offshore finance and a kind of inability of many of these island states to adequately patrol their territories in the face of these new threats such as the narco-submarines, which we talked about.

Where we can start is by focusing on the transformative potential of some of these initiatives. In many country contexts, and we had it in Scotland and maybe here in Ireland, there is one project initiative such as one safe injecting facility. The challenge is that these are simply not transformational. They are underfunded and become a focus for opposition to any of these kinds of changes. The real focus must be on training, developing these alternative projects and better evaluating and monitoring them. The key thing is we do not have the resources going in to make the difference, and we do not have the people who are trained enough, or are resilient enough, to sustain these services. Therefore, we are kind of introducing very small change but that small change is very easily discredited or wrapped up and knocked back. That is the situation we are in at the moment. There has to be massive investment in transformative projects.

Ms Julie Hannah:

Perhaps Professor Buxton mentioned this and I missed it but there is nothing to constrain Ireland in those drug control treaties for decriminalisation. They are permitted by the treaties, or there is sufficient flexibility built into those treaties where decriminalisation is permissible, so Ireland is not constrained in that respect.

Ms Marie Nougier:

I want to make the exact point as Ms Hannah. Decriminalisation is allowed within the conventions. What constrains you is when you move beyond decriminalisation and towards legal regulation. That being said, 300,000 people now live in jurisdictions where cannabis is legally regulated so there is a movement towards legal regulation as well that is very clear. There are avenues, under international law, that would enable Ireland to accommodate legally regulated regimes and these are being explored by countries like Colombia, Bolivia and the Czech Republic. It could be interesting to have a chat with them on how they are trying to accommodate that, including through inter se agreements. I can share some information on this. It is technical but it is allowed within the conventions.

As Professor Buxton said, there is a lot of discussion on the drug control system and how it is not working. Right now, there is a panel of independent experts that was established last year by a resolution by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to review the international drug control system and provide recommendations for improvement. We should also follow that closely and see what recommendations it comes up with that could be helpful in an Irish context.

Evanne Ní Chuilinn (Fine Gael)
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I have a question for Dr. Akintoye on stop and search and, ideally, reducing the discriminatory use of stop and search powers in certain communities. Are there any examples of oversight mechanisms that have been effective in reducing the discriminatory nature of some of those stop and searches?

Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

Something that restricts our understanding of what it looks like in an Irish context is that there is no consistently gathered and reliable data on ethnicity in stop and search. In England, each local force gathers stop and search ethnicity data. That has consistently shown racial disproportionalities, particularly affecting young black people over time and that is mainly driven by drug offences such as drug possession.

In response to decades of critique of this disproportionate targeting of these communities, taking into account the impact it has extends far beyond stop and search itself, impacting feelings of identity, status and belonging of young people, freedom of movement and eroding trust and confidence in the police and all those sorts of issues, there has been a rethinking of how to seek greater police accountability using those statistics and asking the police to account for why these disparities exist and taking into account issues around operational deployment to different police areas. For example, there are stop and search community groups with whom the police work closely. The police will present the stop and search ethnicity data and be asked to explain why there may be more people from one particular ethnic minority group being stopped and searched than another but that relies on that data being available because the problem cannot be diagnosed without an understanding of the symptoms.

In the Irish context, that is very difficult because there is no reliable and consistent gathering of that data. A lot of the data that speaks to disproportionalities along ethnic groups in the Irish context focuses on Irish Travellers, for example, and, to some extent, black communities. It relies on self-report data and survey data rather than something that is gathered by the police itself. The first step here is having that data and being able to look at those numbers and being able to understand how this is influenced by operational decision-making, geographical profiling and the potential influence of stereotyping, which are all the issues that arise in the England and Wales context and have been documented in other parts of the world. Without that data, it becomes very difficult to understand how we begin to address these issues.

There are lots of lessons to be learned in the context of seeing policing as a broader function, as social control, which has arisen decade after decade, and specifically in the context of the metropolitan policing context. In terms of lessons learned for Ireland, I am thinking about what kind of structural similarities there might be and how we might address those by trying to improve trust and confidence in the police, by gathering that data and by having the ability to pursue police accountability and all those sorts of methods but it is very difficult without having that data.

Evanne Ní Chuilinn (Fine Gael)
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Thank you.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank all the witnesses so much for their presentations. They are extremely important for this committee at this juncture as we nearing the end of our deliberations. Everybody has complemented each other on some of those primary questions with which this committee will grapple in the next few weeks.

I will summarise what I have heard in one complete piece and the witnesses can comment individually if they feel my summary adequately represents what I have heard. I am doing this with the future idea of recommendations, just to make it easier to locate.

Obviously, we know the constraints as regards 1961 and what came after that. What I have heard, and I believe from my history of work in this area, is that within that, we can still decriminalise for simple possession because, if we look at other jurisdictions like Germany, we can at least move as far as cannabis in social clubs. There are certain restrictions have been moved around those treaties and that is still a conversation that is potentially up for grabs.

A key component of decriminalisation in its truest form is to remove the discretionary justice-led approach that comes with not only section 3 but also with the current policy of the Department of Health, which is an adult-caution system and which is still police-led and discretionary.

On what Professor Stevens said, people will paternalistically and safely try to move to diversion, as an option, and only partly hear what he said. What I heard him say is that even though diversion is there, and some people will take it up and it is cheaper, it is only being used in the UK because there is a gap in the legislation and the legislature has been slow to decriminalise. Therefore, local boroughs and jurisdictions have taken it upon themselves to introduce diversion. It still is a minute number of people because of discretion, it is still on the statute book and it is not a universal application.

Perhaps the witnesses and Ms Hannah could comment on human rights. I am really concerned about human rights when it comes to diversion. Sometimes people automatically connect diversion with putting people in treatment, sending people to detox and mandating healthcare.

Could Professor Stevens comment briefly on the human rights implications in this regard so that diversion is not another punitive approach? People will sometimes lead on to that. I think it is probably a paternalistic approach, one where it is thought that if we send people for help, then they will come off drugs. This is instead of seeing that this is not the aim of this approach. We are not here to force people to make decisions in any other way. It is about having services available to them if they want, but not about punitively demanding that people do something or punishing those who do not avail of services. That is a brief overview of where we are at now.

Professor Alex Stevens:

The Senator is absolutely right. One of the main points I would like to make here is that diversion is not decriminalisation. Decriminalisation involves removing the offence of possession from the criminal law, and, as Dr. Akintoye said, this would be in section 3 of the Irish legislation. Removing the offence of possession does not limit the powers of the police to intervene in offences of supply, production and transfer of these substances.

The main advantage of decriminalising rather than diverting is that it is a lot simpler and cheaper to apply. If there is no longer an offence of possession, then we do not need to be sucking people into the criminal justice system and spending all that money to produce harms not justified by effects in reducing use.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank Professor Stevens.

Ms Julie Hannah:

I will come in for a moment to comment on the human rights dimensions of this approach. I might squeeze in a little bit about Brazil, but perhaps I will not say it out loud because I do not want to get turned off again.

For me, decriminalisation can support rights protection. It should be able to do so, if it is done well, if the right kinds of principles are followed and if there is an explicit desire to pursue a rights-based approach. In Brazil, almost two years ago now, perhaps just a little bit longer, there was a Supreme Court decision requiring decriminalisation. It was decriminalisation of cannabis only as sort of a step one. There were a lot of internal discussions in Brazil around what this model would look like, how to make it sustainable and how to respond to the issues similar to those that one of the Senators just spoke about, including issues concerning public safety, families and children and the presence of the illicit market, which is not what everyone wants to see every day.

Drug courts did come up in those conversations. They were discarded because there was great concern about the human rights consequences. The issue of diversion also came up, but it was discarded because of the human rights issues. In essence, Brazil has decided to build and scale an alternative model around promoting access to rights and social inclusion. It is concerned with creating spaces across the country called centres for access to rights and social inclusion, abbreviated as the CAIS model.

It can look like a lot of different things. For some municipalities, it is an expansion and acceleration of housing first, because what a lot of these folks need is access to housing. I know there is always a big issue with resources. I do not know the issues around resources in Ireland, but in Brazil, the Supreme Court decision opened a massive seized assets fund. It was a very large amount of money that could be redirected to these social programmes to bring people closer to accessing justice and their rights, whether that is housing, legal aid, access to better education or just safety for the day. Brazil is building a way to monitor and evaluate this model and using human rights as key indicators in respect of outcomes. It might be worth Senator Ruane and other members having some kind of bilateral exchange with the folks building that model in Brazil and we would be happy to facilitate that conversation.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank Ms Hannah. It was well worth the wait for the Brazil conversation. I call Deputy Colm Burke.

Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank all the witnesses for making themselves available to make a presentation and for the work they did in preparing for this meeting. In relation to Ms Nougier’s presentation, she said decriminalisation models can be as or more harmful than criminalisation. She went on to talk at the end about it being important to consider limits on decriminalisation. Looking at Ireland now, what do we need to be aware of if we go down the road of decriminalisation? What mechanisms do we need to put in place so that if we do decriminalisation, it would be done in the safest way? What can we learn from other countries where decriminalisation has occurred?

Ms Marie Nougier:

I thank the Deputy so much for the question. We have done a lot of work in trying to identify the key components of decriminalisation and how they vary from one jurisdiction to another. We found that when we have a decriminalisation model, one of the questions around it is what entity is responsible for considering whether a person is caught in the context of possession for personal use or possession for intent to supply. It can be the police, the prosecutor or the courts. We realised very quickly that it is always helpful to have the police make the decision, because that is the soonest possible point when a person can be diverted away from the criminal justice system, which is the principle of decriminalisation. If it goes all the way to the courts, then it leads to a system in some jurisdictions, for example, in Latin America, where people will spend three to four years waiting for the decision to be made. Very often, they are put in pre-trial detention, so that defeats the purpose of decriminalisation. One point, then, concerns what entity is the decision-maker.

Another aspect is what is the sanction or the response. In a lot of contexts, there are sanctions, but in some contexts, there are no sanctions. In Uruguay, for example, there are no sanctions. For us, that is an important model. Any kind of sanction can have a detrimental impact on a person’s life, especially when they are in a situation of vulnerability and marginalisation. A person who is homeless, for example, will have a lot of trouble paying a fine, even if it is very minor.

Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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Looking at other jurisdictions, one of the important issues is about support systems. The question here concerns planning for that aspect and what will happen if we do not have the support mechanisms and people in place. One of the areas where we are running into difficulties, for instance, is in relation to getting an adequate number of staff to deal with child support. One of the organisations here called Tusla has major challenges in retaining staff. It is likewise in this area. I presume other jurisdictions would have found the same problem as regards getting staff to provide this support while making sure to set up a structure that can be supportive of the staff providing the help to those people who want to move away from addiction.

Ms Marie Nougier:

Absolutely, yes. That is a very important point, especially in a context where there are drastic funding cuts for harm reduction and treatment services around the world, and I am sure Ireland is no exception. The most important point here is to make sure that a decriminalisation model is not established that is very heavy and requires a lot of resources. It does not have to be such a model. A lot of models are quite light and, for example, enable the police to be adequately tooled and trained to make sure they know where the harm reduction services and treatment services are in a community to allow them to orient people towards those services. This should be voluntary anyway, because people cannot be coerced into treatment. The evidence shows it does not work. It is about being able to provide these points of referral without having a structure that is too heavy and cumbersome, and that requires a lot of staff.

This is the problem with Portugal. It is a heavy model. The decriminalisation system through the diversion bodies, the dissuasion committees, is quite expensive and cumbersome. Different models can be considered to make sure this is not too much of an issue. I see that Ms Hannah and Professor Stevens have points to make, so I will stop here to give them time.

Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I wonder if the other witnesses want to come in on this point.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I call Ms Hannah first and then Professor Stevens.

Ms Julie Hannah:

I will come in very briefly to direct the Deputy to the UNAIDS decriminalisation guidance note, which has tried to centralise all of that learning, including the article Professor Stevens has just shared and other studies he has done over the years. The second part of the guidance note looks at the technical aspects Ms Nougier has touched on, including the determination of offences and the thresholds. The note has tried to meld all of that learning from around the world into a quasi-concise document. I hope that will be helpful to the Deputy.

Professor Alex Stevens:

The issue of the social support that might need to be provided alongside decriminalisation has been raised. Portugal provides a really interesting example of that. Its decriminalisation initiative in 2001 was deliberately not just about decriminalising drugs. It was about a programme of social inclusion for socially marginalised people who were using drugs. It was brought in alongside a guaranteed minimum income, a major housing programme and programmes of employment support for people who had problems with drugs. That was very successful. As Ms Nougier has said, it is a reasonably expensive model but a study was done by Dr. Gonçalves and his team at one of the Portuguese universities that found that reducing the costs of the criminal justice response to drug use, which is a very expensive way to deal with drug use, meant that the total social cost of dealing with drug use actually fell despite the costs of these dissuasion committees and the increased levels of treatment and social support that came with them. It is a question of shifting resources away from doing things that are both harmful and expensive and towards doing things that actually help people and that are cheaper. They are certainly cheaper in the long run because they produce long-term benefits rather than continuing this cycle of paying to produce harms.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I have a couple of questions myself. Professor Stevens has stated several times that diversion is not criminalisation. In its simplest form, what is diversion exactly? Who is being diverted? What are they being diverted for? Where are they being diverted to?

Professor Alex Stevens:

We are studying this at the moment. Over 13 different forms of diversion are being used by police in England so I do not have time to go through them all. The main difference between diversion and decriminalisation is that decriminalisation takes away the offence of possession. The main difference within forms of diversion is when they happen. Does diversion happen at the pre-arrest point, as we have talked about, or does it happen later on in the criminal justice process? As I have said, the further people go into the criminal justice system, the more expensive and harmful it gets. Diversion that works at the gate, at the point where the police officer is in contact with the person who is suspected of an offence, is the form that is the least expensive to provide.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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In the UK, diversion was not the result of State policy. It was an initiative taken up by the police services themselves.

Professor Alex Stevens:

In England and Wales, chief constables and constables on the street have operational independence. They can decide how best to enforce the law in their area. Several chief constables, in consultation with their police and crime commissioners, decided that, because of the evidence that was stacking up, it would be more effective and efficient for diversion schemes to be introduced in their areas. The evaluation we have just completed shows that was a good decision because it reduced levels of reoffending and costs in those areas.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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That is a really important point. I might ask Professor Stevens to reiterate it. In the UK, which is no way a bastion of liberalism, the police services in different jurisdictions decided that, based on the evidence and the impotency of the actions taken beforehand, they should adopt a diversion model themselves outside of any sort of policy recommendation from Westminster.

Professor Alex Stevens:

That is correct but Westminster policy has caught up. The current UK drugs strategy, which was published in December 2021, actually does endorse diversion, although it does not go into much detail about it. We have gone into a lot more detail and we have found that diversion has worked for the police forces that took the initiative to create those schemes.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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That is really interesting because we have had expert testimony from senior members of our own police force, An Garda Síochána, in previous weeks and they told us it was their belief that removing section 3 would result in people selling drugs in greater quantities. They were adamant that the removal of section 3 would lead to more prevalent drug selling.

Professor Alex Stevens:

Section 3 is not relevant to drug selling because it is about possession. Ireland has a different section of law dealing with selling, as do we. My colleagues and I have made the argument in defence of decriminalisation in the past that it does not remove the police's power. Let us look at the example of Portugal. I have interviewed police officers in Portugal about this issue. They were initially worried that removing the ability to arrest people just for drug possession with a view to working their way up the chain would reduce their ability to intervene in the supply of drugs. What actually happened in Portugal was that they were able to shift their attention from dealing with low-level possession on the street to intervening in the import market, which is massive in Portugal. After the decriminalisation of drug possession, the amount of drugs seized actually increased because there was no cut-off in the supply of intelligence. There were better relationships between police and people who use drugs on the street because there was less fear of harassment. The police were able to shift their attention to dealing with large-scale imports in the drug trade rather than wasting their time dealing with petty possession offences.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I have a final broad question for anyone who would like to answer it. In terms of the international evidence from different jurisdictions and states that have gone down the road of decriminalisation, are there any similarities across the first, second and third years? Are the same issues encountered and the same problems faced? Has best practice been identified? Are there areas to avoid? What do we do on day two?

Professor Alex Stevens:

There are things to avoid. There have been a couple of bad examples recently. One relates to British Columbia, which the committee may have discussed in its previous deliberations. British Columbia and Oregon both moved to decriminalisation but they did quite badly and have now reversed that decision. The main thing they did badly was to not have a system of social support in place that would be an alternative way to deal with people who are using drugs and having problems on the street. It is not just about clicking a switch in the law. It is about having an integrated system of social support that is non-stigmatising and open to people who have problems with drugs so they can receive supportive assistance rather than going through this constant cycle of being punished through the criminal justice system.

Ms Julie Hannah:

I will just very quickly say that a key aspect of the lessons learned from international decriminalisation really pivots around thresholds. If the personal possession thresholds are set too low, that can really create a cycle of constant arrests. Thresholds are important. Political leadership is the most important thing. If you do not have consistency in political leadership, these initiatives tend to be very quickly rolled back and folded up. To go back to the issue of support systems that was raised earlier, it is important to point out that not all people who are arrested or criminalised for their drug use need support. We should also think about how we can lean into education and prevention, which is more about training and understanding in respect of safer drug use.

Ms Marie Nougier:

I will very briefly mention a pitfall. One of the experiences faced by certain Australian jurisdictions after decriminalisation was that, as a system of fines had been put together, police officers were encouraged to stop people who use drugs and then fine them to generate funds. More people ended up being stopped and going through this fine system because of decriminalisation. Decriminalisation should be accompanied by instructions to say that people who use drugs are not a priority. We need to stop targeting them and to make sure there is a system in place for them to have access to healthcare and support. Police should not spend their resources specifically targeting people who use drugs.

Ms Julie Hannah:

To speak to the issues in Oregon, one of the pitfalls was a lack of consultation with the communities themselves, which would have allowed the wisdom, experience and knowledge of those communities to be harnessed. I refer not only to the people who use drugs in the communities but also to the mothers, children and families who are also in these communities. There needs to be broader community buy-in to these processes so that, when issues do arise, there is a broader church of people in support of the initiatives to keep them moving in the right way and not regressing.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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Thank you. That finishes my questions. We move to the second round. I call Deputy Ó Murchú.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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There has been a consistency across recent meetings on the whole question of section 3, which gardaí and the police force brought up here. They really need to have a conversation with others who have operated decriminalisation, and maybe directly with their police. I would point specifically to the Portuguese model. Their argument was always that they used section 3, but they generally only used it for people who were known to them. Therefore, in a lot of cases, they were players, but I would say that it depended on the gardaí involved in the first place.

As was said earlier, it is about the type of decriminalisation that is required. It is decriminalisation that accepts the reality that there would still be an illegal market. There is not much point in decriminalising to some degree unless we are going to get the benefit of it. However, rather than me babbling on about what I think, I will ask the witnesses to come in regarding where it has been operated best. I am looking for the idea of an effective decriminalisation scenario, accepting that we need wholesale supports, and that we need to deal with the issues of poverty anyway. I am looking for a sales pitch on decriminalisation, given the ineffectiveness of what we are doing here and what is still being done in a lot of the Western world.

Professor Alex Stevens:

I might jump in with the Czech Republic as an example. The Czech Republic decriminalised the possession of drugs back in 1991, on its way out of the Soviet bloc, as a sort of signal of it becoming a liberal democracy. It is rarely discussed in Western discussions of decriminalisation, partly because it has been so unproblematic. There has been some domestic discussion of it, and there was an attempt to increase the tightness of restrictions. However, that was evaluated and shown not to be effective, and to increase the cost of policing, so they went back to a more liberal approach to decriminalising. It was done by removing the offence of possession of a reasonably generous amount of drugs for personal use. They are now thinking of going beyond that approach. A lot of the international attention goes to Portugal because it is such an intriguing example, but there are simpler ways of doing decriminalisation. The Czech Republic provides a good example of just saying: under a certain threshold, we are not going to arrest and punish you for the use of drugs.

Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

I would like to answer the slight inverse of that question, which is what it would look like if we keep section 3. In a UK context, we know that stop and search for drug possession really drives the disproportionality, which is race-based and class-based too. We have evidence in England and Wales that when there is a low threshold of police suspicion, plus police discretion, plus targeted policing in certain high-crime neighbourhoods, which all tend to be structurally disadvantaged neighbourhoods, that leads to unequal outcomes.

As I mentioned earlier, while Ireland lacks that ethnicity data, it has the same structural inequalities and the same structural conditions exist. As I also mentioned, gardaí are not required to record race and ethnicity in a stop-and-search encounter. While that makes it difficult to measure how section 3 impacts people in different sectors of society, it still points to this unfairness and disproportionality, and highlights the impact of weak enforcement.

The key point is that the absence of data is not the absence of risk. The data that exists shows that policing is geographically and socioeconomically concentrated, impacting the most marginalised members of society. In the UK context, it tends to be black working-class communities, although it is different in Ireland. We do tend to see disproportionalities emerge as the result of these low evidentiary thresholds and discretionary police powers. That offers discretion, which is key here. I would emphasise the importance of distinguishing between section 3 and section 15 as a way of trying to tackle some of these underlying inequalities.

Ms Marie Nougier:

I want to expand on what Professor Stevens was saying about Czechia. The second point, which is very important, is that it conducted wide consultations with people who used drugs in communities when it set up the quantity threshold for that, so Czechia is a very good example in this regard.

Another example that was interesting in the research we conducted was the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a de facto model, but it has been implemented since 1976, so they have very broad experience, and there is no questioning of that model. It is a very lean model where the police completely deprioritise people who use drugs. That creates the conditions under which people who use drugs are able to access the systems of care and support they need. These systems are well funded, and there is a lot of peer outreach as well. Because it is decriminalised, people can conduct that work without fear of being punished. It is a very interesting model, which I would encourage the committee to look at.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank Dr. Akintoye for her last contribution. It is very helpful and adds so much more strength to the debate we are about to enter. I will die on the hill of section 3. I am never going to let it go. I grew up in a community where section 3 was used and abused. We also have section 3 in the Drugs Act, which allows the police to stop and search a person, a vehicle or an aircraft - or a submarine - without a warrant. However, they have to have a reasonable suspicion. That is the difference here, and we need to put it on the record. The difference between section 3 and the other sections that govern stop and search is that you have to have reasonable suspicion. You have to be able to say why and for what reason you have stopped and searched an individual.

For me, by maintaining section 3, it reduces the capacity and skill set of the members of An Garda Síochána to have a power that allows them, at will and at whim, to profile who they stop and search because they do not have to say, with reasonable evidence, why they did that. As a nation and as a society, we should expect gardaí to have that level of insight, intelligence or planning to be able to stand over why they stopped and searched someone.

I also think that removing section 3 will radically address the tensions between some communities and An Garda Síochána. When I was growing up, we were sick of being stopped and searched for that reason. As children, when you saw a garda, it did not matter that you did not have anything in your pockets, either then or all the other times you were stopped and searched - you ran and they ran after you. Then you would be arrested for running. It was a form of resistance. It was a case of: here we are again, being stopped and searched; I am not doing it - run. You still had nothing on you. That cat-and-mouse, us-and-them tension creates resistance and hatred. I never stood in my community and said: "Here are the keepers of the peace." If we really want to stand over what An Garda Síochána means, we need to remove the lazy policing that section 3 entails, not only for adequate decriminalisation, but also for communities that have been abused by this section for absolutely everything and anything, even when it has nothing to do with drugs, the possession of drugs or the suspicion of the possession of drugs.

There is not really a question in that, but I just wanted to thank the witnesses. They have renewed my absolute rage in relation to section 3. I thank them for their contributions. There is some time available, if any of the witnesses wish to comment.

Dr. Bisi Akintoye:

I would like to come in. I feel the Senator's rage, and I completely agree with her. These drug laws are really a tool for unequal outcomes, and criminalisation legitimises these harmful impacts on all sorts of communities, which vary from place to place. There are lessons to be learned from the terrible example that Britain has shown. The UK really demonstrates what happens when criminalisation and policing are left unchecked. We see these entrenched disproportionalities along class, race, religion and ethnicity lines, despite similar patterns of drug use.

Ireland has this really clear opportunity to avoid reproducing that model by thinking about how deviating away from criminalisation can improve trust and legitimacy in the police, reduce stigma and criminalisation and increase co-operation and reporting with the police. Many communities have such a hostile dynamic with the police that when its members see the police, they end up running not because they have done something wrong but because that lack of trust is so deeply entrenched and they are so scared of being targeted. That is not a system that works well for anyone - not for these communities and not for the police - so we have an opportunity here to address some of these really deeply embedded hostilities by making some changes in the legislation here.

Professor Julia Buxton:

One of the key things international experience has shown us is that the police are vital stakeholders in these debates. If they are not on side with the changes that governments or local authorities want to introduce, it can be a real challenge. The debate needs to be pushed back because what we are seeing in terms in these shifts in drug markets requires us to better understand what the policing skills of the future need to be. Policing has been so locked into plant materials, interceptions and kicking down doors but this is being transformed. This is about economic crime and digital crime so we need to better understand what kind of skills policing needs for the future in terms of the types of drug problems we will have in the future.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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That sounds like a really good place to leave it. On behalf of the committee, I thank all our witnesses for their contribution today. It was an incredibly interesting session and will add hugely to the work of this committee.