Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

From the Minister of State's speech and from our knowledge of the area, we would be very conscious that this is the case on the ground and that we have, as others have said, about 10,000 people on opiate substance programmes administered by the HSE. We recognise that addiction is a medical issue. I am glad to hear the Minister of State speak about the expansion of the needle exchange programme and I absolutely support him on the idea of the medically supervised injecting rooms. That is a hugely positive development in dealing with the harms associated with addiction. "Positive" is perhaps the wrong word to use in the context, but it would certainly be an improvement on the sort of street injecting that causes other problems around public order, intimidation of the public, and so on.

We also need to look in a rational sense at the way in which certain drugs that are controlled, particularly cannabis, may be used for medicinal purposes. There is a growing debate on this internationally. I have spoken to the Minister of State about this and I know of many people who, for example, have small children with very serious medical conditions which they believe can be improved or better managed through medical marijuana. We have seen a great deal of use of that and development of that in the US. I would like to develop that conversation with the Minister of State, because we should not be fearful about it. If there is an evidence-based rationale for prescribing cannabis or a cannabinoid for medical reasons, we should look at that.

We need to look more broadly at our drugs policy from a harm reduction perspective. I am glad to say that other members of the Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, of which I am also a member, will be travelling to Lisbon in June, in a few weeks time, to look at the model that has been adopted in Portugal. This is of great interest as an alternative model very much based on harm reduction, as opposed to the prohibitionist model with which we are, unfortunately, more familiar. I have said before that if we use a sort of "Boston-Berlin" argument about policies generally on the economy and society, then in Ireland we clearly follow a Boston model on drugs. That is unfortunate because it is based on the simple, crude and wildly unrealistic idea that criminal law can stop people from using drugs. In other words, if drug possession is a criminal offence, this will deter people from taking drugs and eliminate drug use. We know this prohibitionist approach does not work. The war on drugs has not stopped people using drugs, just as asking people to abstain from sex will not prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases or HIV. We must take a more realistic and rational evidence-based approach to this. The Berlin model, which is more common in some European jurisdictions, recognises that the elimination of drug use is impossible. It seeks instead to reduce or prevent the harms that can arise from drug use, through medical means predominantly rather than through criminal law. This involves taking on the approaches the Minister of State talked about through seeking to educate people about the dangers associated with harmful drug use.

We also need to acknowledge the class issue in terms of drug use. This is rarely spoken about but is very obvious for any criminal justice practitioner. Broadly speaking, in any society, there are two different groups of drug users: those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are more likely to be criminalised for their drug use, and middle class users, who use drugs recreationally and who tend to go undetected and remain outside the criminal law. We see that class difference in Ireland broadly and tragically holding true for the consequences of drug-taking. Heroin addiction has caused terrible tragedy and devastation within many disadvantaged communities, but middle class ecstasy and cocaine use does not have, or certainly has not been perceived to have, those terrible social and economic consequences in different societies. This phenomenon is not exclusive to drug offences. I have written more generally about class in the criminal justice system, because we know there is a deep-rooted class bias in our criminal justice system more generally. However, it is important that any rational drugs policy would take into account the class difference and the fact that there are different means of using drugs and different sorts of harm caused by the use of drugs. Also, from a criminal justice perspective, we must all be very conscious of the huge harm caused by the criminalisation of drugs, the growth of criminal gangs and the huge damage done to communities by the prevalence of those criminal gangs. That is another reason to look in a more rational and measured way at how we develop drug policy in Ireland. I hope the Minister of State will take some of those comments and concerns on board in working with other agencies and Departments on devising the new national drugs strategy for the period after 2016. I look forward to working with him on that.