Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this important debate on the issue. It has been debated numerous times since I became a Deputy. The drugs industry is one of demand and supply and the demand will always exist in society whether we like it. The recent debate on decriminalisation of drugs for personal use was beneficial but it did not go far enough. Anyway, that is probably for another debate. Policy change in recent times favours a health-led approach rather than a criminal justice approach and that is welcome.

The drugs task forces have been around for the past 20 years. Those involved have been at the coalface of dealing with issues relating to drugs in communities. There is a major concern among those involved in the drugs task forces that their involvement is being overlooked in favour of a more centralised approach. I believe this would be a retrograde approach.

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Another aspect of this is class. Working class communities have been disproportionately affected by drug use. When I was growing up in Clondalkin, I had many friends at school who began to dabble with drugs when they were teenagers. That led to devastation for individuals, families and communities and the legacy lives on today. The scale of the devastation can only be measured in terms of the destruction of lives. The policy of using the criminal justice system to tackle drug use has largely failed.

I wish to express an opinion about drugs with which people may disagree. We must have a completely different approach to drug use and how we deal with people who use drugs. Some people use rather than abuse drugs and live perfectly happy lives. There are people who use drugs recreationally who have both jobs and families. As Deputy Kelly said earlier, the level of cocaine use at the moment is incredible. The demand for cocaine is incredible and all the laws in the world will not stop people supplying drugs to those who want them, including cocaine. Recreational drug users exist. There are many people in every sphere of life, from every class and background, whether rural or urban, who will use drugs but they are not criminals and should not be criminalised. It is their choice to use drugs and they should not be morally judged for doing so.

We need to have a major discourse about the deregulation of all drugs. That is probably not palatable to some people but the prohibition on certain drugs has largely been a failure. The drug laws in this country are completely out of date. Cannabis is a widely used plant and drug that should be regulated, taxed and legalised. This would take it out of the hands of criminal gangs. We should regulate, tax and control it as other countries, like Canada, have done. New Zealand is to hold a referendum on the regulation of cannabis. Certain states in the USA have regulated and legalised it and the sky has not fallen in. We must have a debate on the legalisation of cannabis because anything that takes people out of the criminal justice system is worth considering. The vacuum of prohibition and non-regulation has created an alternative economy where vast profits can be made by criminal gangs who use absolutely grotesque violence and intimidation against their own communities. That is the vacuum in which we live, where illicit drugs, which are illegal, are still readily available and people are using them. There is something wrong here and no law under the sun can tackle this.

We need to look at taking a radically different approach in terms of the law, health and society itself and public opinion is ahead of politicians on this issue. Ireland has matured and is more liberal in its outlook, particularly with regard to the use of drugs. I am not trying to glamorise this in any way because I have seen from my own family how drugs can destroy lives but we need a completely different approach. It is not necessarily going to be nice because there is a dark side to all of this but we need to do something different. Legalisation is not a panacea by any means but if it saves one life, then it is worth doing because at the moment, we are losing the war on drugs.

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