Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak briefly about some of the new Ministers, especially our colleague from the previous Seanad, the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, who has a hugely important brief concerning drug policy and the national drugs strategy. I plead with the Minister of State to slow down and to give himself time to understand the issue. I worked very closely with the Minister of State who played several football matches with people who have experienced drug abuse and drug use. Unfortunately, in the past few days, he has made comments to the effect that cannabis is a gateway to cocaine use. This is an unfounded myth that has been proved wrong time and again. Nobody would hold it against a new Minister giving himself time to get to know and understand the issue and the topic that he is about to be working on. It is one of the most important issues for me, as someone who has not only worked in addiction for 20 years, but who has lived with an addiction for a long time and who has lost many friends to addiction. The gateway to addiction, to heroin use or to alcoholism is primarily inequality, trauma, pain and poverty. It is really unhelpful to begin a brief with throwaway comments that are not helpful to the community that is going to need a huge amount of support, especially coming out of a pandemic. Drug use coming out of the last period of austerity, which began in 2008, saw many people die from overdoses due to changing drug trends and we are going to see that again as addiction increases during a time of lockdown and things become much more problematic.As Commencement matters will not be taken for the next while, my request is that instead of thinking they have to go onto panels, appear on news clips and have an opinion on something, Ministers who are new in their post should take a moment. They should take in the brief and reach out to people who understand the issues and who have been working in that area for ten, 20 or 30 years. Then, from an informed position and not from one of opinion, they should start advocating for that important brief. I wanted to note that because how one starts off in a Ministry is hugely important. None us would hold it against the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, to take that time and work with people before he starts making comments which are actually unhelpful to the huge amount of work that has been done in this area for a long time.