Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The key point is that the Deputy referred to figures for a certain period. One can be selective in picking particular periods.

I agree with Deputies Tóibín and Shanahan that drugs seem to be the engine of the organised crime industry. That is because there is huge money to be made on the sale of drugs. We have seen infiltration by the drugs industry in many different organisations and areas of public life here in Ireland as well as in other countries. We would be naive to think that level of infiltration by organised crime does not happen here. Members of An Garda Síochána have been accused of it, as have members of political parties, although there have been no accusations pertaining to the Judiciary. The financial resources available to these international organisations are vast. I will make a point that may differ from those made by many of my colleagues. I am sure there were members of Sinn Féin who were aghast that one of its councillors was involved in organised crime. I was on Dublin City Council with the person concerned and I was aghast to learn he was involved. It is a warning, however, that there is no area of public life that organised crime cannot infiltrate and that is because at the centre of it is the sale of what we regard to be illegal substances.

I come to this debate knowing drugs are harmful and wanting to reduce their consumption and the harm they cause, as well as championing recovery. We can make communities safer by taking that approach. The citizens' assembly is a welcome step because it is an admission by the State that the current system is not working. Everybody agrees on that. That is not necessarily to say that any change is positive; that is to say the current system is not working. It is a bit like fireworks. We all know fireworks are illegal but every September, October and November, they can be heard every hour of every day in some communities. The situation in respect of drugs is exactly the same. They are widely and freely available and that is an admission of the failure of the approach of criminalising that activity. We need to admit the current approach is not working. How do we change it? Politicians get away with murder by using the phrase "a health-led approach". It is rarely backed up with an explanation of what it means. The citizens' assembly will force Members of the House to explain what we mean when we refer to a health-led approach.

In anticipation of the citizens' assembly debate, I recorded three 40-minute episodes of a podcast with nine people of differing views to help to communicate and explain some of the concepts at the heart of this issue. Senator Lynn Ruane, Philly McMahon and Fr. Peter McVerry, who have political views that are very different from mine, outlined the scale of the problem. They spoke about how sports clubs and communities experience significant levels of use of illegal substances despite their illegality. They spoke about the debate in the House in the 1970s when the Misuse of Drugs Act was first introduced and how Deputies questioned whether the approach being taken on drugs conflicted with that in respect of alcohol. Irish society is uncomfortable with that comparison and I understand why. It is because alcohol is a regulated industry with quality controls and so on. Fr. Peter McVerry rightly pointed out, however, that if there are two groups of young people standing on street corners in two different parts of Dublin and taking two different forms of drugs, there will be totally different social analyses of those groups just because they are taking different substances. The issue is not the substance, however. Rather, it is the illness of addiction into which people often fall.

Many people use drugs and continue in their lives. It has a negative impact on their health but they may be able to function in society, just as some people overuse alcohol and are able to function. There are people who fall into problematic drug use and, for them, the way we treat drugs differently is the problem. People can openly seek treatment for a person with an alcohol addiction without fear that this admission will lead to a criminal conviction. There is much more widespread acceptance that alcohol addiction is an illness and can be treated. If a person has an addiction to illegal drugs, there is a totally different range of barriers. Those with such an addiction have to admit to a health professional and family members that they are committing a crime. They may be in debt and have to repay the price of the drugs. Their family members can get sucked into repaying those debts. There are different barriers to entry to treatment and recovery for two different substances but the same illness of addiction. A criminal sanction is one of the reasons for that.

Decriminalisation will make a massive difference for those with problematic drug use. That is not to say that drug use is a positive thing or should be endorsed. In fact, there should be a redoubling of our efforts to send public health messaging that drugs are poor. Philly McMahon made that point on the podcast. He said he sees lots of advertisements about road safety deaths and other public health messaging but there is not enough public health messaging that certain types of drugs have an adverse effect. He made that point as a person who wants drugs to be decriminalised. He is saying the State should spend more to dissuade people from taking drugs.

We also spoke to Denise Proudfoot, head of nursing education at DCU. She spoke about dual diagnosis. That relates to people who, because of the pain of mental health issues such as anxiety and so on, sometimes self-medicate. They take a substance such as alcohol, cannabis or cocaine to try to reduce the pain caused by their mental health issue. I had not come across that concept before. If I have a headache, I take two Panadol and the pain goes away. If a person has mental health pain or the pain of trauma from sexual abuse or another significant trauma, sometimes the best way to function is to take something that takes the pain away.

Sometimes, due to their circumstances or the availability within the community, people do not consume alcohol but take an illegal substance. We have to find a way for those who are self-medicating to be treated without becoming criminals as a result of what they are taking. The concept of self-medicating needs to be examined.

We also need to address dual diagnosis. Someone could have a mental health diagnosis and an addiction but the problem is that many of our services treat either the addiction or the mental health and will only take a client who has one or the other, rather than both.

Dr. Proudfoot spoke passionately about the idea that a person’s initial choice may be to take the drug a first, second or third time but the reward system in the brain changes over time. As we know from alcohol addiction - it is no different with other forms of addiction - people do not make the same free choices they made the first time they took the drug because the addiction is taking over. We all know the addiction is not the person and the person has an illness. We need to factor in that concept of dual diagnosis.

Maureen Penrose, who has been involved in the National Family Support Network for many years, spoke about the impact of drugs on her family and how it had destroyed the lives of many people. She said we should be treating this as an emergency because the current system is destroying many people’s lives and we are not doing enough to solve it. That is true. As proud as I am of many of the initiatives this Government and previous Governments have taken, we are not doing enough for people who have an addiction and to prevent people from seeing addiction as a way of easing their pain.

Ms Penrose also spoke about the idea of trauma and adverse childhood experiences, whereby events in a person’s childhood can cause a pain that he or she seeks to numb. I spoke about this earlier.

In the third episode, the podcast discusses the decisions that all of us in this Chamber will have to deal with because when the Citizens’ Assembly makes its recommendations, the report will come to us. This is a very difficult political issue because two groups of people are very much afraid of decriminalisation. One group is the people who have drug dealing taking place at their gate every day. They do not want that to get worse or the State to say it is okay. They are fearful that decriminalisation will make the problem worse. The other group consists of those who have family members in addiction, do not want to see that happen to other people and fear that decriminalisation could cause that to happen to other people.

This is a difficult political debate for us because, in the same way as when we approach Covid-19, these are difficult medical concepts which can be difficult to communicate in the heated debate that can often happen. I urge people to lean into the medical evidence on all of this. As I said, this is not to say the taking of unregulated illegal drugs is positive. I do not think anybody is arguing that we legalise heroin, cocaine or any of those substances.

Deputy Jim O’Callaghan, the final contributor to the podcast, stated that while he was open to the concept of decriminalisation, he did not believe we should send the message that drugs were a positive thing. I agree with him on that.

We need to have a big and adult conversation on this issue, which very much challenges all of us. We have to think of what we would do if one of our brothers or sisters or our mother or father was addicted to a substance? Would we, in our heart of hearts, report our family member to the Garda or would we try to get him or her treatment? Would those of us with the money to do so use those resources to get that treatment privately? For those who do not have money, would they find it difficult to seek recovery? That is what is happening in many communities.

We have to approach this as if it involved a family member. While it may not be the case now, in five or ten years’ time, we could all find ourselves in a situation where a family member is addicted. We must find ways to respond to that and that involves fundamentally changing the way we do things.

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