John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this topic. Fianna Fáil will be supporting this Bill which has been expected for some time. As the Minister of State is aware, problem drug use continues to be one of the most significant challenges facing the city of Dublin and the entire country. We know how drugs and substances undermine the human potential of the drug user, devastating the lives of families and causing huge problems for local communities. Equally, we know that many habits and addictions do not emerge from nowhere. They do not exist in isolation, nor are they usually aberrations, disconnected from the context of the life of any one human being. Rather, they tend to be symptomatic of a person's environment and, to borrow a phrase of which the Taoiseach seems to be so fond, a function and symptom of a person's lived experience.

In supporting this legislation, I recognise the need to address the illegality of the sale and misuse of the listed drugs. It follows the line of my party’s manifesto position which seeks to develop and implement an effective national substance misuse strategy inclusive of all drugs, including alcohol and cannabis. It is the view in Fianna Fáil - my colleagues Deputy James Browne and the party's spokesperson, Deputy Jack Chambers, have articulated it - that further delay on this legislation is only adding to a growing crisis in the country and especially, though not exclusively, in inner city areas.

From talking to communities under pressure, with which I am in touch, as are my colleagues, a very strong signal was being sent by them to their public representatives that they were under siege from these so-called Z-drugs. Used by heroin addicts, the medication is highly addictive, deeply damaging and, in some cases, has fatal consequences.

I am aware of the warnings issued in my constituency of Dublin South-West by the Tallaght drugs and alcohol task force concerning the need for users to stay clear of some "homemade drugs" which had left people hospitalised. This was as far back as 2014. However, in the intervening years the culture of drug use has changed. There is a huge amount of experimentation with new drugs among young people, many of whom class their drug use as recreational. Polydrug use is also a major concern, with people using a diverse range of substances, including alcohol. We often forget alcohol when it comes to discussing the misuse of drugs. For some people, alcohol and drinking have become a chaotic feature of their lives.

We have been calling for this legislation to be updated for some time, and a change of regulations is required. The signing of regulations is required to criminalise that activity and to give the Garda the power it requires to arrest those who are distributing tablets across the city. Those powers are not there and, incredibly, the Garda is not in a position to move effectively on this phenomenon, which is a huge source of revenue to the drug lords and is damaging young people in these communities.

I note the Minister referred in his speech to the legislation as an important element of the Government’s arsenal in the fight against drug-dealing and trafficking, and consequent gangland crime. I want to be consistent in my response to this. I welcome the intention of the Bill but I have to object to the term "gangland". I wish the Government and some in the media would resist the temptation to continually use this term. Deliberately or not, it is geographically defining and does a huge injustice to the amazing communities striving to live full lives in many parts of this city and country.

I welcome that the Minister is presenting the Bill early and that the Government decided to expedite the drafting and publication of parts of the Misuse of Drugs Bill, originally scheduled for the autumn. I support the aid it should provide for the law-enforcement functions of An Garda Síochána in tackling crime associated with the illegal sale of certain substances.

There is a problem, as I referred to earlier, with the sale on the street of prescription medicines. As the Minister pointed out, this is especially true of some medicines not controlled under the misuse of drugs legislation. It is clear that the legislation in this area needs to be urgently strengthened, in particular to tackle the street trading in some of these prescription medicines. The Minister has noted that, "the most prevalent products being sold on the street, for example, the zopiclone products used to treat insomnia, remain solely under the medicinal products regulations rather than the Misuse of Drugs Acts. It is possible for persons selling prescription medicines to be charged under the medicines legislation". As the Minister pointed out, "This legislation is framed as a regulatory measure to govern the legitimate trade in these types of product, rather than as a criminal code". The Minister also suggested that, "It is clear there are those who are exploiting this for their own criminal gains". In view of this I welcome the move by the Government to address this shortcoming in the law in this regard.

The Minister is right to highlight the misuse of psychoactive drugs. Of those who use and misuse drugs, psychoactive drugs are becoming more and more the drugs of choice of teenagers and young adults in Ireland and across Europe. Their use is endemic across Ireland, not in so-called gangland areas. In fact, the notion that this will somehow limit the crime in Dublin’s north inner city is to completely miss the point relating to the scale of drug use in Ireland. All this view does is reinforce the stereotype that drug use takes place in poor, disadvantaged areas of poverty and deprivation. The use of psychoactive drugs is widespread. While I support the measures in the Bill, I am disappointed at the linking in the Bill with the locations the Minister highlighted earlier.

The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, has visited the north inner city of Dublin. I saw him there one of the days I was there myself, so he knows that, geographically, it is not a huge area, containing as it does a small number of tightly knit communities. If the Minister thinks that the drug barons, whose names scream across our media on a daily basis, make their money  from selling drugs in just these locations, he is sadly mistaken.

To those who promote the decriminalising of drugs, or the legalising of drugs --- this point has been made in the other Chamber — we have to recognise that even if that measure were taken at some stage in the future, people would still be taking drugs and there is a consequence in that, even if the middle-person has been removed from the equation in terms of sales. I am particularly happy that the focus of the Minister's speech was not limited to the inner city of Dublin, because it would be a mistake to identify this as a Dublin City-related problem, as he is well aware. However, there is very little mention of other cities, or indeed other parts of Dublin. In some ways, the only difference between the inner city and other parts of the country is that the main players in the ongoing murder campaign are, for the most part, based there, but we do know that not all of those players come from there. At least one of those major players hails from the very middle class of north Dublin. The problems are equal nationally. The answer is not necessarily more laws exclusively, but more opportunities for work, for further and continuing education, for meaningful apprenticeship programmes in their own communities, for the means of creative expression and celebration of a culture that, in the case of Dublin’s north inner city, has been swamped, smothered and colonised by financial services, tech giants and property developers, with no community gain for people who have lived there for many generations. This does not exclusively refer to Dublin City.

The drugs task forces were established initially to address the chronic heroin problem that existed in a different era, but their role is as valuable today as ever. They now embrace the problem of alcohol misuse, but with the polydrug misuse problem they need serious resources. Those effective drugs task forces need to be strongly supported, and no community resource is as close to the drug problem, besides the local Garda, as the task forces are. On the measures being proposed today by the Government through the Bill, the Minister in his capacity as Minister for Health and Deputy Byrne in her capacity as Minister of State might look at bolstering the role of those demonstrably effective drugs and alcohol task forces, which are like the proverbial child with their fingers in the dyke within their own communities. The courts, too, need to be more proactive and more speedy in processing cases. I want to take the opportunity to ask where the Government’s mini-CAB proposals are at this stage.

The Government’s new strategy on drugs will not be ready until at least the end of the year. There does not seem to be a sense of urgency about implementing measures that are badly needed, notwithstanding the measure before us today. The Minister will be aware that drugs are at the root of a huge amount of petty criminal activity in Ireland: people rob things to feed their habit. Political leadership is badly needed in this area and in this Government it is so far sadly lacking.

For the last year figures were published, which was in 2013, we were aware that over 650 people died in Ireland from drugs or alcohol poisoning. We know this from inquests and coroners' reports. They are startling figures. They are likely to be higher as more annualised figures become available to us. Behind each statistic lies the cliche of devastation and loss at some level. While this measure is to be welcomed, it can be truly welcomed as only one of a number of measures required. Education regarding the misuse of drugs has to begin as early as primary school level. For example, schools are addressing the mental health challenges that confront us through the introduction of wellness programmes at primary school level. In view of this the dangers of drugs misuse have to be highlighted much earlier and in a programmatic way. Most of all, huge energy has to be invested into helping those communities most affected by the drug problem.

I hope the Minister and the Minister of State pay close attention to the valuable contributions that have been made and will continue to be made by Opposition Deputies.

I welcome the fact that this is one in a number of steps to which the Minister claims to be committed. They all add up - one by one - to the patchwork quilt that must be adopted in order to ensure that this problem, which is not going to be eradicated, will be addressed much more constructively.

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