Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will take 25 minutes and Deputy O'Reilly will take five.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill 2016. I have followed its progression through the Seanad and have read all the contributions by Senators during its passage through that Chamber.

My party colleague in the Seanad, Senator Máire Devine, outlined our support for the Bill. She also put on the record of the Seanad our misgivings about the proposed legislation. I wish to place on the record of this House my own critique of the legislation. When enacted, this legislation will essentially have the effect of criminalising any person in possession of the listed prescription drugs when they do not have a legally-held prescription. This legislation will criminalise vulnerable drug addicts. It is as simple as that and there is no getting away from it. From the 1970s to today, Ireland has viewed drug addiction as a criminal issue rather than a public health crisis, despite Government announcements to the contrary. Introducing a criminal penalty for drug use is about as far away from this Administration's stated intention in its programme for Government of moving towards a harm reduction health care model of drugs treatment than one can possibly get.

In basic terms, what this legislation is proposing is the ability of the State to arrest, charge and convict vulnerable addicts for the possession of prescription drugs for personal use. I would be one of the first to sympathise with communities who are living with the scourge of drug use. Indeed, I have seen at first hand what it can do to families. We should be doing everything within our power to reduce drug abuse, but this legislation will certainly not achieve that goal.

During a briefing with officials from the Department of Health, it was suggested the legislation is being brought forward because the Garda had requested it in its fight against organised crime. It was also stated that there was no consultation with drug service providers in the State, nor was there any consultation with medical practitioners who are very often responsible for giving out large doses of benzos to individuals with drug addiction problems. God forbid that we might ask the drug users themselves what their needs are concerning their addictions.

This is not the first item of legislation that is being brought forward simply because the Garda wants it. Legislation that gives the Garda sweeping powers to view electronic communications is planned. Legislation that will increase penalties for women engaged in sex work is already on the schedule, all because - from what we are told - the Garda Síochána has stated that it is required. That is no way to formulate or develop justice policy, and it is certainly not the way health policy should be developed. While we must listen to Garda with regard to what powers it might like or need, we, as legislators, certainly should not be creating legal frameworks based solely on its views.

It is not good enough that Ministers talk about evidence-based models and then introduce a Bill of this nature. The Bill will not address drug use or gangland crime in the way the Minister for Justice and Equality has attempted to outline. The only people who will be affected by this Bill are drug addicts who are the problem users of unlawfully held prescription drugs and those addicts who sell on their lawfully-held prescriptions of benzos to fund their heroin addiction.

Gardaí can seize benzos held by addicts if they want, but this will not magically wipe out any debt an addict may owe to drug dealers for buying heroin. What will simply happen is that the addict will increase the amount he or she takes to sell on next time in order to pay off the debts he or she owes to local drug dealers. Criminal penalties will not have any impact on his or her addiction and will not eradicate the anti-social behaviour of dealing that sometimes goes with it.

If criminalising the possession of drugs - prescription or otherwise - had any impact on addiction rates, we would not have the highest ever rate of drug use in the history of the State. Furthermore, if it had any impact, we would not have young people walking into Mountjoy or Cork prisons and then being released with full-blown addictions that they did not have on entry. If the Government and the State as a whole were serious about addressing problematic drug use, they would be looking at investing in communities that are most affected by it. Sinn Féin will table amendments to the Proceeds of Crime (Amendment) Bill 2016, which has just passed Second Stage in the Seanad. These amendments will state that all moneys seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau should be ring-fenced and put back into the communities worst affected by drugs. Earlier today, our Seanad spokesperson who put forward those amendments was contacted by a senior civil servant asking him to withdraw them on false grounds. The civil servant said it was impossible to implement the amendments and asked the Senator to withdraw them.

Problem drug use flourishes in areas of embedded poverty, with generations of unemployment, poor education standards and a lack of facilities. Policy responses from the State often give a passing acknowledgment to the environmental and social background of the drug problems affecting these communities. However, they seldom address the need to do something about the wider social and economic issues that feed drug addiction. Instead, the State pays lip service to the provision of detox facilities or rehabilitation but has no regard for the astonishing levels of social deprivation. If evidence of this was needed, the Minister should note that there are only four beds for adolescents to detox in this State. We have methadone maintenance programmes, limited needle exchanges and some excellent locally-based services that do great work in spite, rather than because, of the HSE funding structures. Far more needs to be done and there needs to be an explicit commitment to harm-reduction, health-led approaches that are matched by the policy and resources to go with them - not the reactionary nonsense contained in the Bill.

We need to move towards a model of decriminalisation of drugs for personal use along the lines of the Portuguese, Swedish or Australian models - that is, an evidence-based model based on international best practise. On Committee Stage of the Bill in the Seanad, the Minister said the policy goal was to have an evidence-based approach based on international best practice. It is ironic that in this instance we are ignoring all the evidence and international best practise by further criminalising drug addiction.

The legislation, as currently drafted, is pure rhetoric. It is about being able to say that the Government is doing something about organised crime regardless of whether what it is doing actually works. If Members think for one second that this measure will have a lasting impact on organised crime, they are sorely mistaken.

This will not result in any increase in tolerance or respect for drug users as, like those in our prisons, many consider them not worthy. They are seen as a social problem to be dealt with by the State rather than as individuals who may need medical treatment for the affliction of addiction. There will be little difference in the rates of drug use in years to come unless we tackle the core issues, such as poverty and deprivation. Without addressing those issues, we are going nowhere. This does not mean we simply provide more resources to the Garda Síochána to combat drug dealers and traffickers and the addicts criminalised by this legislation. While it is important to do that, we must also address the housing and education issues that are the basis of social exclusion.

The approach to drug policy in this State has always been marked by words that are undermined by actions. The Government established the local drugs task forces in 1997 to address the dual concentrations of problematic drug use and poverty and social exclusion. I was a member of the task force in my local area. Many of them have done great work to reduce the drug-related harm to individuals, families and communities by working in partnership with the community, the voluntary sector and the health services. However, the impact of austerity policies on whole communities and the reduction of funding to these services will impact on generations to come. Levels of poverty have increased massively since 2008. Already deprived social groups are experiencing much higher rates of poverty than others. More than half of those who live in social housing are unemployed. More than half one-parent families experience deprivation, with more than one third of them designated as being at risk of poverty, living on less than €200 per week or less than 60% of the average income. It is not surprising that some people self-medicate the trauma of growing up in poverty with drugs when they are surrounded by communities in decay because Governments choose to line the pockets of the haves rather than the have-nots.

Over the past two decades drug production, supply and consumption has changed. The types of drugs people take is dependent on what is easily accessible and how much it costs. According to HSE data, the number of people accessing methadone treatment has increased every year for the past five years. Some may see this as a good thing but we do not know if there is a definitive correspondent reduction in the number of people taking heroin. In many cases, people are taking methadone and heroin. For more than a decade we have had people described as benzo-users. It appears the State is only now waking up to that reality. Young people commonly take cannabis, cocaine and pills along with alcohol. New psychoactive substances continue to come on the market. For every drug the Government has managed to put on the controlled substance list, new ones have appeared. Gone are the days when an addict stuck to taking one drug. Polydrug use is a major issue, with persons now taking cannabis, benzos and alcohol.

This legislation will not address polydrug use. According to active drug users and those working on the ground in drug task forces are concerned, there is no shortage of drugs despite the recession. Drug use massively increased during the years the Government inflicted austerity policies on communities. If the people who design these ill-thought out laws were to engage with people who are in the throes of addiction they would find that the years of austerity have had a major impact on them. Welfare programmes have been restructured and are now harder to access. Despite the Labour Party continuously banging on about no changes to core payments, there has been a reduction in social welfare payments. There is a lack of respite and detoxification places for those wishing to exit addiction. Despite an acknowledgement in this legislation that benzodiazepine use is a major social problem there is a severe lack of treatment options for those wishing to exit the use of benzos. The HSE drug treatment services have in many cases been rightly criticised for their lack of engagement and consultation with the community and voluntary services that support them.

As there was no work in certain areas over many years unemployment rates soared and social deprivation took grip. There was a corresponding expansion of the drug economy that destabilised these communities even further. That is no coincidence. While no one would defend the so-called drug traffickers and organised crime figures - they need to face they full rigor of the law in respect of their activities because they are the people who are destroying communities and those with addictions - it is hard not to have sympathy for a young lad who ends up in the drug economy, having grown up in a community where drugs have been prevalent for many years and there was little economic opportunity for him outside of that community. I am not making excuses for such individuals: I am simply pointing out that these are factors in young men and women ending up in the drug economy. Many start out as addicts and move on to selling drugs to fund their addiction.

The outcomes of Government policies have been negative. We are consistently moving towards the idea that if we address an individual's addiction the context in which the addiction manifested itself will be miraculously resolved. We are in the context of this Bill now in a space where there is no cognisance being taken of the outcomes of Government policy and no mind paid to the fact that individuals are not always singularly responsible for their problematic drug use. If that were the case then simply telling children in schools to say "No" would be a perfectly valid response to drug problems. We all know that this is not the case.

The approach in this jurisdiction to drug use is one based on a public system that measures outputs, effectiveness and value for money. There is no assessment of the needs of people and communities. It is based on consultants telling Departments how to run services on a skeleton crew and less money while doing more. It does not matter if "more" might not work. I recently spoke to an official from the Department about the supervised injection centres, which is a welcome, progressive initiative. However, I am concerned that these centres will operate on a pilot basis and that we are not looking beyond that to the consumption room models. However, that is a debate for another day.

In preparation for the debate on this legislation I tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the HSE on the levels of drug use. According to the HSE records, in 2014, 725 persons under 18 sought treatment for problematic drug use yet, as I said earlier, there are only four detox bed spaces available. Those 725 people are either seeking, waiting for or in the middle of a drug treatment programme. There are only two service providers in the State reported to be providing needle exchange services for individuals under 18.

We have no idea how many individuals under 18 are not in treatment or have not sought treatment. There are 10,165 registered methadone users and this figure is increasing at a rate of about 100 each year. The number of people who have entered drug treatment for specific drug problems, as opposed to alcohol use, has risen from 7,363 in 2012 to 9,046 in 2014. Clearly, policies that criminalise addicts are not working. The figures bear that out. All of the statistics indicate an increase in the problem.

One of the analyses put forward by this proposers of this Bill, such as the Minister of State and the Garda, is that the gardaí do not want legislation to go after vulnerable addicts or people with an addiction who may have prescription drugs on their person for personal use. I need only look at the crime figures from recent years to know that this will not be the case. Between 2004 and 2014, approximately 187,000 people were charged with drug offences in this State. Around 90% of them were prosecuted for possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use, resulting in a criminal conviction. Clearly, this policy of criminalisation will continue with this Bill. Leaving aside for a moment the consequences for an individual of having a minor drug conviction for possession, how can anyone suggest that this is a necessary or valid use of public money? A total of 168,000 people were convicted of having drugs for personal use.

I will return to the personal consequences of such criminal convictions. Many local authorities have a policy of Garda checks on prospective tenants and, while I do not object to this in principle, there is growing evidence that individuals with minor drug convictions are being discriminated against in housing allocation. A minor conviction for drug possession for personal use has lifelong implications for the person concerned, and I simply do not believe we should punish addicts indefinitely, even if they are no longer involved with drugs. Simply excluding former addicts with a criminal conviction from the housing process and introducing further legislation that will criminalise individuals will not address these people's poverty or addiction or the issue of antisocial behaviour that goes with drug use. People with addictions are victims of neoliberal austerity policies implemented by this Government and previous ones. I cannot see the practical benefits of supporting such a legal framework that not only will not address the issue of organised crime, as alleged, but that also target addicts actively, making the lives of some worse.

In her Seanad contribution, the Minister of State said it was the innocent victims who were most affected, and I agree completely. She went on to talk about the people with the fancy cars and houses who do not live in the country and how they are the people this legislation is concerned with. I find this a very bizarre statement when one takes it in the context of the Government's allegation that this will address organised crime while simultaneously backing up its public health approach to drugs. The Minister of State cannot have it both ways. Further punitive legislation as a policy response does not work and has never been proven to work, and this Bill simply creates scapegoats rather than solutions.

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