Brendan Ryan (Labour)

This is an important issue, although I see it differently from other people. We must focus on where this is a problem and keep a perspective on the general issue of the use of illegal substances. Some communities have been devastated by one particular drug but a significant proportion of our young people are at least occasional users of an entirely different drug. However politically difficult it may be, anyone who has worked in or been involved with primary education knows that by inserting the word "drugs" into the title of a meeting, there will be standing room only, whereas, if "illiteracy","alcohol" or "tobacco" are inserted, only a small percentage will attend. We must restore that perspective.

I teach in a third level institution with a daily population of almost 10,000 young people between the ages of, perhaps, 17 and 22 or 23. From talking to those who provide support for those 10,000 young people, one finds there is drug use, particularly of cannabis and, to a degree, ecstasy. However, personal or other problems, serious emotional distress or physical harm as a result of such drug use are rare enough.

What concerns me and many others, is the prevalence of alcohol misuse among relatively affluent and well-educated young people. I am concerned that the number of people under 25 years of age presenting at hospitals due to physical or other harm done to themselves because of habitual abuse of alcohol, and not because they are drunk, is going up quite dramatically. In terms of the impact on our society, I still retain the view that alcohol will end up doing far more harm in society generally. I fully accept there are areas in our society where one drug has had a devastating impact and I will come to that issue. It is a reproach to us all that this blight was allowed to descend on very poor communities with the perception in those communities of indifference on the part of the rest of us. Nevertheless, it is important to keep a perspective.

I am increasingly impatient with any attempt to talk generically about drugs as diverse as cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin. The only thing they have in common is that they are illegal. In any spectrum, however one views it — this is not an argument about legalising it or otherwise — cannabis is more like alcohol than heroin in terms of its effect and medium and long-term consequences. The national advisory committee commissioned a quite detailed study on the impact of cannabis. It took me a while to dig it out because its website was a bit peculiar this morning, but the report is a remarkably balanced document which everybody who feels they want to make categorical pronouncements about the impact of cannabis should read.

I would not encourage any young person to start to smoke cannabis at 17, 18 or 19 years of age. I would prefer if young people did not start to drink until they were older than that, until they were a bit more rooted in the ground and in the world and had the maturity to deal with any kind of mood altering substance. Let us not be under any illusion — alcohol alters one's mood, consciousness and perceptions every bit as much as cannabis. Let us not argue about medium or long-term difficulties.

The report the NACD commissioned on the impact of cannabis is extremely nuanced and well-balanced and is a fine piece of work of which we should all be aware if we are to make pronouncements about this. It is very difficult to convince literate, educated young people that the same approach should be applied to them if they are occasional users of cannabis as to somebody who is an occasional user of cocaine or heroin. We are in the unique position where, for the first time in history, young people are probably better educated, more informed and more knowledgeable about many issues than the previous generation. We need to get a perspective on all of this.

We must get away from absolutism, whether absolute permissiveness or absolute prevention. We must look at what works to achieve the appropriate result. We want what works to minimise the human harm that results from the use of mind altering substances, whether profoundly addictive like heroin or debatably addictive like, perhaps, consistent use of cannabis. We need, therefore, to begin to talk about these substances. I would not be happy if there was any possibility that a young person could end up with a criminal record simply for having in his or her possession a small quantity of cannabis. Whatever lesson we are trying to offer society, criminalising individuals who possess small quantities of cannabis is a lesson which will suggest to young people that the older generation, the Garda and others are not in touch with the realities of life. I do not have a simple solution to this because decriminalisation can draw in people from outside the country, as has been the experience in the Netherlands.

By and large, the Garda operates a sensible, pragmatic approach to this issue which it operated even 30 or 40 years when I was a student. What concerns me, and people who have spoken to me, is the belief that the pragmatic policy that might be used vis-À-vis bright young students from Foxrock or Montenotte where I live in Cork might not be the same as that used in respect of a 16 year old from Farranree or Togher in Cork or the inner city of Dublin. Similar approaches should be used as it is just as wrong, or probably worse, to destroy the life prospects of such a youngster. There is an issue of perspective.

On the question of what works, I had the good fortune of spending a few days with Deputies Gregory, Durkan and Carey, with whom the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, is well acquainted, in St. Gallen, Switzerland, before the last election looking at a heroin prescription programme. Despite whatever emotional, hysterical headline one could generate, everybody we met, including public administrators, medical practitioners and the police, all felt it was a successful part of a harm reduction response to heroin. I do not want to spend my time outlining or boring the House with the details but as far as those people were concerned, it met a specific need. We met heroin addicts who were working and holding down normal jobs and who called into a clinic once a day and paid three Swiss francs for a supply and a clean needle. The irony was that the best quality heroin in Europe was being delivered to these clinics by the police in St. Gallen because of the need for security. However, it seemed to work.

One could easily be walked into saying we should do the same. Our professionals, rather than politicians, need to continue to look at what works to minimise harm and minimise the risks to the life prospects of young people, where it works and on what we should focus. It is not helped by any type of blanket approach. At a meeting in a secondary school in which I was involved, a very concerned parent asked a senior Garda officer when parents should worry that their son or daughter is on drugs. That is a legitimate question which is difficult to answer. If one's son or daughter is smoking cannabis once a fortnight, one will probably see no signs of any harm, if that is all he or she is doing. However, the garda in question, perhaps excessively, warned about teenagers becoming somewhat withdrawn, not paying as much attention to personal hygiene as formerly, changing their style of dress, etc. One mother with two or three teenage children said to me afterwards that this was the best description of a teenager she had heard in a long time. It involved a whole succession of indicators that are probably identifiable in some cases with the beginnings of a drug use habit, but are also characteristics of a large number of teenage children as they go through various phases. We need to be sure we are not frightening parents into believing that every time they have an awkward, sullen, withdrawn son or daughter walking into his or her room and not talking, the most likely cause is drug abuse. The chances are that the most likely cause of such behaviour is the fact that they are teenagers in the first place.

We need to realise again and again that, by and large, young people are bright, well-informed and wary of authority which to them does not appear to be honest. Listening to young people, including my own children, they assure me, as all children assure their parents, that they would never touch illegal substances. How many children tell their parents the opposite? I choose to and do believe they are telling me the truth. However, they say many of their friends would be singularly unimpressed by most of what is said to them because it comes from older people. They are sceptical as to whether these older people know any more than they do. There is a large amount of peer to peer work to be done, perhaps by young people who have had a serious drug abuse problem and have managed to deal with it.

In conclusion, I believe there are two different issues to be dealt with. One is the recreational use of substances varying from cannabis through cocaine. I do not agree with Senator O'Toole. Cocaine in this country is predominantly a drug of affluence rather than one of poverty, although I am sure there are poor people who use it. However, if we did not have the extraordinary prevalence of endemic poverty among some communities in this country, the risk of people turning to heroin as an outlet from that misery would be spectacularly reduced.

I recall Deputy Gregory talking about the fact that all through the 1980s it was impossible to get the authorities to deal with the selling of heroin in inner city communities. There was always a belief that they were targeting the big people and it could not be done. Eventually the Concerned Parents Against Drugs body was set up. As Deputy Gregory informed me, the prompt conclusion was that suddenly there was no shortage of gardaí to mind the concerned parents because it was alleged they had subversive links. Many people legitimately asked Deputy Gregory how it was possible for the authorities to find enough gardaí to control the concerned parents when they were trying to do something about drugs, but could not find any to do something about the drugs problem beforehand. I believe it is an omission from all drugs policy not to realise that the elimination of scandalous levels of income and educational inequality in this country would together do as much to reduce the risk of serious damage from drug misuse as all of these welcome initiatives together.