Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party, including Deputy Ó Ríordáin, for the motion. It is important and I am delighted we have the opportunity to speak about the matter. It is often said, and has been said several times today in the Chamber, that the war on drugs has failed. All of us with good intentions see that it has failed in that it has not done anything to alleviate the suffering of affected communities. When I think of this, I think of the Latin phrase "Qui bono?", which loosely translates as "Who benefits?". Who actually benefits from the so-called war on drugs initiated by US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s? It is certainly not the communities in the north inner city that I grew up in and represent, nor is it the communities destroyed across Ireland, the UK and America as a consequence of the current approach.

The legal profession has benefited from the war on drugs. Consider the circumstances of an addicted young person who has grown up in my constituency and who has been arrested several times for the consumption of something that is ostensibly taken to deal with trauma, addiction and pain. Consider also the number of people imprisoned for the possession of heroin or crack cocaine. When arrested, be it once, twice or three times, they usually have in their possession an amount of drug worth no more than a couple of hundred euro. The drug becomes monetised, as does the person's suffering and pain, meaning he is brought to the courts. His solicitor gets paid and a judge and barrister also get paid. The person is brought to prison and the couple of hundred euro all of a sudden becomes the €82,000-plus that it costs to incarcerate a person in this country. In prison, the individual probably receives the treatment he or she should have got beforehand, but that also costs money. The doctors cost money. The couple of hundred euro worth of drug the person had in his possession to deal with trauma, suffering and pain is all of a sudden magnified into hundreds of thousands of euro to the benefit of a class of people who do not reflect the community he came from.

I sometimes ask myself whether the war on drugs has failed or does what neoliberalism always does, that is, monetise poverty and pain. The latter has continued for the past four to five decades. It will continue unless we call stop, call it insanity and point to the very reason we must fight so hard just to have what is medical best practice when it comes to the decriminalisation of drugs. The reason we have not done it yet is that a class of people benefit, but I promise it is not the class of people being discussed today. Until we establish that, we will not combat the problem. Therefore, let us just call it out for what it is. There is no war on drugs; there is a war on poverty, but not in the way we imagine it should be done. There is a war to continue as we are doing because people benefit from it. The beneficiaries are not those who suffer. We have to call it out.

When we think about models that work, we hear a lot about the Portuguese one. I am aware that Deputy Feighan is approaching the middle of his term as Minister of State responsible for drugs. I would love him to tell me whether he believes the model in this country, which we often describe as healthcare led, works. We cannot have a healthcare-led model while still criminalising people at a basic level. When the Minister of State reflects on this, regardless of whether his role is to change, I will be interested in hearing whether he believes the Portuguese model works. It has its flaws, of course, but I want to know whether the Minister of State believes it is a better model than ours. What are his measurements for success in this regard? The Portuguese model results in fewer convictions and takes more people in the throes of addiction out of their pain into recovery. It results in fewer young people becoming addicted at the level in question and fewer recorded as having offences. Why have we not implemented this model? I believe I already know the answer.

I support the citizens' assembly, as does everybody else in this Chamber. In 2023, I hope we will have many experts around the table with citizens and they will tell us what a body of evidence that is probably decades old indicates: criminalising people for addiction does not work. That will be true in 2023 but it was true in 1993, when the evidence also existed. Despite the evidence, we still have not done what I suggest.

Even though centre-right parties, including Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, tell us they are now more progressive in their outlook and despite our hearing about expert-led activity and medical best practice, the Minister of State will still stand here today and say that, while the Government will not oppose the motion introduced by the Labour Party and supported by all of us, it will not do anything about it. Next year, despite the fact that this motion will have been passed, people will still be injecting themselves with a poison or taking crack cocaine to deal with trauma and they will be looking over their shoulders because gardaí who will have been taken away from essential duties or from addressing burglaries will be sent down laneways to catch them to incarcerate them and put them through a process that generates huge amounts of money for those who do not live in the communities that suffer. This is because we fail to do what is right and medically and scientifically proven.

The hypocrisy of it. I roll my eyes to the back of my head when a politician says he smoked a joint in college and congratulates himself. We pat such a person on the back, put him on the front of magazines and state how cool he is, but he is safe and protected because he comes from a class of people who are protected from the criminalisation that would apply to a person from the north inner city who said he took drugs when younger. The latter would be considered a criminal. Politicians and those from middle-class professions who say they did of course smoke a joint in college are not criminalised for it and do not get a lifelong conviction that would affect the type of job they might get. The hypocrisy of it is scandalous.

I want to talk about a compassion-led approach to drug addiction. The first step is to take the hypocrisy away from it and call it for what it is. The current approach generates considerable revenue for people who are not in the communities in question, yet the Government will do nothing after it allows this motion to be passed. It is absolutely scandalous. If we do rejig the Ministries, another Minister of State will probably come in and do nothing also. We will patronise the affected communities, saying we have invested so much in them. What will be the outcome? I guarantee the money invested in communities will not be the same as the amount by which middle-class communities will benefit through their work in the legal profession and everywhere else. Poverty pays but it does not pay the people who suffer. It pays other people. It makes meal tickets. We know that, as do the communities and people who are affected. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Ministers know it too, as do those in the legal profession. Until we call truth on this, the war on drugs will be a war on poverty. We will all say the war on drugs has failed but it has not; it has succeeded in that we have made wealth out of it and monetised poverty. Until we call that truth for what it is, we are just lying to ourselves and patronising communities. We are saying we have invested so much but we have sustained the problem. The income keeps flowing into the more middle-class communities, which actually benefit from the suffering and trauma of other people. It is absolutely scandalous.

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