Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Bill 2010 with the Minister. The Bill is a response to increasing public concern about the proliferation of so-called head shops. I struggle to come up with a different expression to "head shop" which, like joyriding, has become commonplace in our language. It is a pity we cannot use a more precise or less flippant term.

The Minister noted that 102 head shops were trading when the order was issued in May to bring certain substances within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. The order did not ensure the closure of all of these head shops because, as he acknowledged, 48 head shops were still trading on 10 June. The remarkable increase in the number of these shops has led to the increased concern about them.

There is a perception that they cause immense harm. The products they sell have been widely used by persons who are already addicted to substances. Senator Boyle and others raised the issue of polydrug use. Great harm is caused to, for example, those who are already addicted to opiates when they use head shop products to compound existing problems of addiction.

Double standards are evident on many levels, including the portrayal of drug use and head shops in film and other media. While the legal approach is to criminalise, popular culture takes a different view of drug use. We take a very different approach to alcohol, the drug which causes the most harm in society. We allow legal access to alcohol, albeit regulated by reference to age, even though we are aware of the immense personal, social and economic harm that results from the epidemic of alcohol abuse, including the terrible scourge of suicide. We are not seeking to criminalise alcohol in the same way as head shop products and the substances covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act.

We held a more general debate on drug use in December 2007. The then Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Pat Carey, pointed out the importance of taking a cross-departmental approach and this is also recognised in the Government's national drugs strategy. When we debate legislation aimed at a particular mischief and introducing prohibition orders, we are focusing on criminal law approaches but we must take a holistic and cross-departmental approach when addressing the broader picture of drug use and addiction. The then Minister of State accepted the need to be rational in considering the issue of drugs. We must also devise credible measures to reduce the harm associated with drug abuse and, in particular, to reduce the number of tragic deaths resulting from abuse.

One school of thought suggests that scare mongering is the answer but the people who put themselves at risk by taking drugs are unlikely to listen. Blunt slogans such as Nancy Reagan's advice to just say "No" are no longer seen as effective ways to prevent drug use. It is similar to asking people to abstain from sex to prevent the spread of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases. A more rational approach based on harm reduction and death prevention and involving a credible message could have greater effect. I am not necessarily criticising Government policy in this area because it takes a rational approach to drug addiction with, for example, the HSE methadone programme, which treats addiction as a medical problem, and the stronger commitment to rehabilitation.

However, drug rehabilitation needs to be better resourced if it is to be a goal of sentencing in our criminal justice system. As somebody who has worked in the criminal justice system for years, I have seen at first hand the terrible trauma inflicted on the families of addicts and those who have been victimised by addicts. Heroine addiction does huge damage to communities, individuals and their families. Perhaps the Minister will outline his long-term plans for the drugs court. This court was introduced as a pilot project and while its full implementation has been promised, we have not yet seen progress on it.

I am associated with the drug policy action group, which comprises people working in the area of drug rehabilitation and the front-line provision of services to drug addicts. The group came together with the aim of fostering a rational debate on drug policy and exploring alternative policy means to reduce the harm associated with drug abuse. It suggested that some of our approaches which focus solely on criminal justice have tended to increase rather than decrease the harm associated with drug use. For example, mandatory sentencing may not have an effective impact on reducing the supply of drugs. It strongly argues for a greater emphasis on medical approaches to addiction, including drug rehabilitation for persons in prison.

I acknowledge that great strides have been made in Mountjoy Prison, in which significant problems had previously arisen because of the absence of a methadone regime. However, the incidence of drug use in prison continues to be a concern. I am aware of cases involving people on drug rehabilitation programmes and regulated methadone regimes who became addicted to drugs again while in prison.

We need to investigate harm reduction strategies in other countries, including imaginative targeting of people at risk from the harm associated with drug abuse.

There is an argument for taking a different approach to some drugs, in particular cannabis. In England, for example, the possession of cannabis has been downgraded as an offence. There is a rationality associated with such an approach since there is less harm associated with cannabis use than with the use of other drugs such as opiates and cocaine.

The elephant in the room, the issue that is often not mentioned when we speak about drugs, is disadvantage. We know that a great deal more harm is done in disadvantaged communities by the abuse of illegal drugs, opiate addiction in particular, than elsewhere. Therefore, any approach to drug policy must take into account the issue of economic disadvantage. Having seen families suffer, particularly through the current economic recession, we do not want the disadvantaged communities which have never been lifted by the Celtic tiger to slip into further disadvantage. We certainly do not want opiate addiction to take even greater hold in communities. Drug policy must address the difficulty of economic disadvantage and its impact on drug addiction.

The Labour Party supports the approach taken in the Bill of using a more general control mechanism. The Minister spoke about the difficulty of taking a piecemeal approach to bringing individual substances under the headings of the Misuse of Drugs Act and noted that the chemical compounds simply changed and that it, therefore, became a matter of time before the shops selling these products reopened. The method proposed is more rational and will, I hope, be more effective.

A much wider issue arises with regard to drug policy and our approach to drug addiction and abuse and a much broader range of measures is necessary to target those at risk of drug addiction. We must target educational messages at disadvantaged communities, introduce harm reduction measures and ensure adequate resources are available for drug addiction programmes, including the methadone maintenance programme operated by the Health Service Executive. We must avoid simply locking up addicts without treating addiction which must be viewed as a medical rather than a criminal justice problem.