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

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am sharing time with Deputies Murphy and Boyd Barrett. I thank the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, for its assistance with this Bill. Even though it is a very short Bill, the office did a lot of work to determine its permissibility and found it legally permissible under many stipulations of law, including European law. It found that, if there was political will, this could be legislated for. That is important to note. I welcome our esteemed guests from all parts of the world to the Public Gallery. Many people here have shown great commitment on this issue. This debate has gone on for decades. In my living memory, the default position of the State has always been to continue to criminalise and incarcerate people for drug use. Whatever one believes as to the moral and ethical issues around drug use, we have had six decades of this.

Ireland has one of the highest drug-related death rates in Europe. Our prisons are overflowing with addiction issues and the drug industry. We would think that after six decades of failure things would have moved on. The debate has evolved, and I include myself in this. Most people are more educated, informed and enlightened about what has gone before and what needs to happen now. As I have said previously, imprisoning, criminalising and stigmatising people does not work. We have seen that in other jurisdictions. It is important to move on.

Many people are questioning the logic of our anti-drug laws. They were written in the 1970s when the war on drugs was in its full throes. If we scratch the surface, we see that the war on drugs was concentrated on racism and class with regard to poor people and people of colour. This is for another debate at another time. I am glad that public opinion has progressed and moved on. People do not have the hang-ups that others have in relation to discriminating against people. The citizens' assembly has projected that we need to move on from the status quobecause it simply does not work. The citizens' assembly has made many recommendations, including non-legislative recommendations about treatment and how we approach the issue. It also made a fundamental stance on criminalising people. In order to act on this the law has to be changed. It is as simple as that. That is the way our party and many others see it.

As well as the citizens' assembly making its recommendations on stopping criminalising people, 15 months ago the justice committee published a very good report which is a damning indictment of our criminal justice system and continuously criminalising people. My interpretation, and that of many others, is that it advocated a different model and approach to drug use and misuse. We all understand this. It went further on stopping criminalising people and looked at various models and jurisdictions.

To get on to what the Bill is about, it is very moderate. I and my party are the first to say this. We hope it is a precursor to full regulation of cannabis. It is a moderate Bill on the simple possession of up to 7 g of cannabis for personal use. People have asked me why it is 7 g. If we look at Luxemburg and Malta they have stipulated 7 g. It is a small amount for simple possession. If this were legislated for tomorrow, somebody with that amount of cannabis would not be prosecuted and would not have to go through the criminal justice system. We would think this would make sense but sometimes sense goes out the door.

The adult caution scheme was introduced in 2020. It is extremely arbitrary and at the discretion of individual gardaí regarding those they may find in possession of a small amount of drugs. Since 2020 the number of people charged and brought through the criminal justice system has exploded. It has not reduced. It has increased to more than 6,500 people being brought to court for simple possession. It is very arbitrary. Do individual gardaí use their discretion? In most cases they do not. It should not be up to an individual garda; the law on simple possession should change. This is what the Bill is about and what the citizens' assembly has made recommendations on. It is very arbitrary.

People being brought before a criminal court for a small amount of drugs does not work. If somebody can tell me how it does work, I am all ears. We have been all ears for the past six decades and it does not work. A better system is decriminalisation of the person. We are remaining in the paradigm of drugs being illegal. We are not talking about making things legal in the Bill. We are talking about the decriminalisation of the person and this is important.

The elephant in the room is the black market, which is very profitable. The people who control the black market are criminal gangs which are very violent. They use all sorts of intimidation in communities throughout the country. Largely they control the black market. We have this ridiculous system in place whereby drugs that supposed to be controlled by the State are controlled by the black market. Why allow this to happen? Why let this vacuum continue to exist?

The Bill is very moderate. I understand the Government has tabled a timed amendment, which is very disappointing. The ink is hardly dry on the citizens' assembly's report and the Government is saying there needs to be a timed amendment on this. This is a test of the will of the Government on this issue. I am not naive; I know that members of the Government are bitterly opposed to the recommendations of the citizens' assembly. They want the status quoto continue. Even today, a number of doctors have come out with disinformation about the Bill we have tabled. The Bill is not about legalisation; it is about decriminalising a person who chooses to use cannabis. These doctors have equated 7 g of cannabis with four bottles of vodka. Hold on. Four bottles of vodka would kill you and not only you but your family as well. They are equating 7 g of cannabis with four bottles of vodka. Are they joking? Are they serious? This is the level of discourse and debate we are up against.

These doctors want the status quoto continue. This is what they are saying. The status quodoes not work. The citizens' assembly and the justice committee have stipulated that the status quodoes not work. The interpretation most of us got from the citizen's assembly is that things need to move on through non-legislative measures and legislative change regarding the Misuse of Drugs Act. This is where it is all at regarding the legislation. Regarding what these doctors have stated, the Bill is not anti-health by any means. We are pro-people. Anti-drugs laws are anti-people and they have always been so. Incarcerating, criminalising and stigmatising people are what the past six decades have been all about. We want to dismantle this and give people choice. We want to stop stigmatising and marginalising people and give them a right to exist without criminal sanction. This is what the Bill is about.

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