Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 27 June 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
Decriminalisation, Depenalisation, Diversion and Legalisation of Drugs: Discussion
9:30 am
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Apologies have been received from Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor.
Parliamentary privilege is considered to apply to the utterances of members participating online in a committee meeting when their participation is within the parliamentary precincts. There can be no assurances in respect of participation online from outside the parliamentary precincts and members should bear this in mind when they are contributing.
The topic of this meeting is engagement on decriminalisation, depenalisation, diversion and legalisation. This is the first meeting on this topic and it will be followed by a number of other such meetings on the same topic.
I welcome our witnesses, who are gathered patiently online, Professor Alex Stevens of the University of Kent, Dr. Niamh Eastwood, executive director of Release, and Ms Ruby Lawlor, executive director of Youth RISE. They are all very welcome to join us online.
I invite Professor Stevens to give his opening statement.
Professor Alex Stevens:
I am professor in criminal justice at the University of Kent. I was previously a member the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and also president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy.
With Dr. Caitlin Hughes of Flinders University in Australia, I carried out a review alternatives to criminalisation for simple possession for the Irish Department of Justice and Equality in 2018. In that report, we identified four alternatives to criminalising possession. The first was depenalisation, which involves keeping the law in place but making the practical decision not to enforce punishments against people for low-level drug possession offences. That differs from diversion, which can be done either de facto or de jure, and involves replacing criminal punishments with a therapeutic or educative intervention. The third alternative is decriminalisation, which involves a de jure change to the law to remove the offence of simple possession from the criminal law. The fourth alternative is legalisation, which involves eliminating penalties not just for possession but also for the sale, production and distribution of these substances.
That four category taxonomy provides an even wider range of complexity within each of these decisions. For example, to whom are these alternatives to be applied? Is it to children, adults or both? There are some places that, rather bizarrely, maintain criminalisation for children while decriminalising use for adults. This seems to be the reversal of what we would want.
There is also the question of which drugs will be covered. Is it just cannabis or will a wider range of substances be involved? For all of these drugs, will there be weight threshold that determines the difference between possession and supply or will the police and prosecution need to prove intent to supply? The threshold comes with a whole range of complexities. It is difficult to define a weight that robustly distinguishes between possession and supply.
There are also issues related to if, for example, it is diversion, what diversion will there be? Will it be a drug awareness course? Will it be a one-to-one intervention? Who will pay for it? Does the person who is diverted have to pay? What happens if the person does not comply with the diversion?
How many times will the diversion be available to people? If it is decided that it is not a good thing to punish people for drug use, it also does not seem to be a good idea to punish them for not complying with something that is about their drug use. If it is legalisation, then there is a range of issues to discuss.
There is a trade-off between eliminating the illicit market by allowing a more commercial approach which involves advertising and price promotion, as there are for other products in the market. The benefit of that is to minimise the size of the illicit market and all the harms that come with it, but it might increase drug use. Therefore, one might be tempted to legalise but with very tight regulations, as has been done in Germany with cannabis. The risk in this case is that the illicit market is not eliminated because people still prefer to use the wider range of substances and lower prices in the illegal market. Policymakers have, therefore, a wide range of options and options within options to consider.
The broad lesson from the more than 50 countries that have tried these alternatives so far is that reducing the punishment for simple possession of drugs does not increase drug use and, therefore, related harms. It seems that such alternatives provide a net positive, in that they reduce the harms of criminalisation, without increasing use or related harms.
Legalisation is a more complex option. There is some evidence of increased use among older adults, for example, in the states of the United States that have legalised cannabis. There are interesting experiments going on comparing provinces of Canada that have different models of legalisation of cannabis. An experiment has just got under way in the Netherlands with a regulated supply to the coffee shops. There is a lot to consider and a lot to learn. I look forward to our discussion today.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Professor Stevens. I now invite Ms Eastwood to give her opening statement on behalf of Release.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I am executive director of Release, a charity established in 1967. We are the UK centre of expertise on drugs and drug laws. I am also an associate member of the drug and alcohol research group at Middlesex University. I am a member of the expert reference group for the London commission on drugs and I am currently a technical adviser to the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
My organisation provides legal and expert drugs services to more than 1,000 people every year. We address issues such as drug-law offences, homelessness, housing insecurity, financial insecurity and problems people may be experiencing with their treatment services. It is the experiences of the people with whom we work that results in the research we publish. We publish research on the impact of the criminal law on people who use drugs and on communities that are over-policed on the basis of the drug laws. We have also done extensive research on harm-reduction interventions and harm-reduction approaches, more broadly. In 2012, we published the first global overview of models of decriminalisation adopted by jurisdictions across the world. I was a co-author on this report and have been a co-author on our subsequent updates of this publication. Therefore, we are considered experts on this topic and we have advised governments across the world on drug policy and decriminalisation. This is what I will speak about today.
As Professor Stevens has pointed out, decriminalisation is essentially the ending of criminalisation of people who use drugs. Practically, this means the removal of criminal sanctions for use and possession of drugs, with these being replaced with civil sanctions in some jurisdictions. It is worth noting that a number of jurisdictions, including Spain, Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands, implement a no-punishment model. In 2012, when we first started to examine the global state of decriminalisation, 21 countries had taken this approach. Today, there are nearly 40 countries and dozens of states in the USA, Australia and Canada. Some of these legal frameworks are decades old. It is worth noting that the majority of countries have applied it to all controlled substances, not just cannabis.
Many governments wrongly believe that decriminalising drug possession will lead to an increase in prevalence. This is not the case. Research from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, EMCDDA, and leading academics, including Professor Stevens, have shown that decriminalisation is not yet linked to an increase in drug use. However, when effectively implemented and coupled with support for harm reduction and treatment, decriminalising people who use drugs can have profound and positive outcomes across health, social and economic indicators.
This is why decriminalisation is the policy position supported by the Chief Executives Board for Coordination, CEB, of the United Nations, which represents all 33 UN agencies, including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It is why decriminalisation has been described by UNAIDS, other UN agencies and the WHO as a critical enabler in accessing health services for key populations. It is why the 2023 report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights describes decriminalisation as a powerful instrument to ensure the rights of people who use drugs are protected. These positions were reflected in a more recent report by the UN special rapporteur on health.
Without decriminalising people who use drugs, we cannot attain the highest standard of health and protect fundamental rights. Portugal, which decriminalised possession of drugs in 2001, is probably the best researched of all the examples. Since then, the country has experienced significant decreases in rates of HIV transmission, a 40% reduction in injecting drug use and a 62% increase in the number of people accessing treatment. In 2021, drug-related deaths in Portugal were nine per million of the population. In the US, it was 36 times higher, at 321 per million of the population. While the high rates in North America are linked to a toxic drugs supply - something politicians and policymakers in Ireland and Europe are increasingly concerned about - the states in the US still implement a criminal justice response to deal with drug use, deterring people from accessing support. The situation in the US is so bad that there is a decline in life expectancy at a population level.
Every country in Europe that has ended criminal sanctions for drug possession has significantly lower drug-related death rates than those countries in the region that adopt a criminal justice response. These countries have the highest rates. This includes Ireland, which, as the members know, unfortunately has the highest rate of deaths among EU member states, at 92 per million of population. This is ten times higher than the rate in Portugal.
The chilling effect of criminalisation on health is persuasively reflected in a recent report by the Higher Education Policy Institute in the UK. This found that nearly one in five students did not seek emergency help because of fear of punishment when they found themselves in a scary situation with drugs. It is also reflected in opiate-related deaths in England and Wales, where 50% of people who died had not been in contact with treatment services for at least five years. There are many reasons for this but one is that when people are defined, first and foremost, as criminals, they are unlikely to come forward to seek support, be it emergency help or treatment for dependency. In our view, the policies that we currently enact through the criminal legal system are literally killing people. I am very interested in discussing with the committee some of the evidence from countries around the world.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Eastwood for her very interesting presentation. I now invite Ms Lawlor to give her opening statement on behalf of Youth RISE. I thank her for preparing her statement and appearing before the committee at such short notice.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I thank the committee for the opportunity to present the argument for drug policy reforms in Ireland. I am the executive director of Youth RISE, an international network of young people who use drugs and-or young people affected by punitive policies. I have worked on drug policy reform and harm reduction in Ireland and more recently in the global drug policy sphere. I have advocated at various meetings at the UN, highlighting the challenges and human rights violations faced by young people who use drugs, the need for drug policy reform and youth-tailored health and harm reduction.
Youth RISE was established 18 years ago and has been a key global organisation in ensuring the fulfilment of the health and human rights of young people who use drugs.
We have produced reports, position papers and research on the impact of drug policies on our population and worked with decision-makers to prioritise our needs. Earlier this year, I presented at the Mayor of Amsterdam's conference Dealing with Drugs to inform mayors from around the world how to put young people at the centre of legalisation and regulation efforts in their cities.
The war on drugs has been waged in the name of protecting young people, yet young people are among the most severely affected by systemic health and human rights violations as a result of punitive drug policies. These policies have not protected young people and have made them vulnerable to receiving criminal records and criminal sanctions and to being incarcerated. They have pushed young people away from vital support systems, including family, education and health services, and they have violated their human rights. Furthermore, drug use among young people is consistently rising regardless of doubling down on failed criminalising policies that are supposed to deter us from using drugs.
Young people from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and communities are being manipulated and sometimes forced into the illicit drug trade, a drug trade that was created and that flourishes because of prohibitionist drug policies. Young people in these communities and those who have been in contact with the criminal justice system report greater distrust in the Garda, a body that is meant to protect them. Young people from marginalised communities are being disproportionately stopped and searched by the Garda despite the prevalence of drug use across people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. For what? Drug use is not decreasing, and meanwhile the harms caused by punitive policies are increasing. The criminalisation of drugs means, in reality, the criminalisation of marginalised communities. The growth and influence of the illicit drug trade, particularly in these communities, puts young people in danger, and Irish organisations like Youth Workers Against Prohibition work to actively combat this through advocating the regulation of all drugs, undercutting the criminal market and significantly reducing the power that criminal gangs have in these communities.
Furthermore, punitive drug policies violate human rights, as recently reported by the OHCHR, the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, and, just this week, Amnesty International. Each of their reports gives special mention to the disproportionate impact of punitive drug policies on children and young people. The impact of criminal records on children and young people is devastating, resulting in stigma and discrimination, diminished access to education and housing, reduced prospects for future employment, and negative impacts on family relationships.
The Garda youth diversion scheme provides some insight into the benefits of diverting young people from criminal systems, with a vast majority of adolescents who go through this scheme not reoffending in their lifetimes. This is evidence that investing in personal development, instead of punishment, works. However, diversion does not tackle the root causes and is not sufficient to truly protect young people from the harms of current drug policies. We must go further.
Punitive policies have severe impacts on children's rights, the right to non-discrimination, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to education, the right to health and health services, and the right to protection from neglect and violence, to name but a few. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child noted that appropriate measures to protect children from drugs must be rights-compliant and effective and include the development of accessible and child-sensitive harm reduction services and drug-dependence treatment, providing accessible, appropriate and evidence-based information to children about drugs and refraining from criminalising children because of their drug use or possession of drugs for personal use. Increasingly in Ireland, we are seeing the risks that unregulated drug markets pose and the devastation they have already caused. Overdose rates in Ireland are skyrocketing by comparison with those in the rest of Europe, and Ireland has yet to respond to this crisis with effective measures. Ireland needs to legalise and regulate all drugs to disrupt the illicit drug market and adulterated drug supply. In Ireland, we are experiencing an overdose crisis due to nitazines in the drug supply, as seen across the pond in the USA and Canada due to the devastating impact of unregulated drug markets. The more heavily we prohibit and criminalise drugs and their use, the more potent the drugs that seep into the market, the more accessible drugs are to young people and the less likely they are to seek support, drug treatment and lifesaving harm-reduction services.
We all want to protect children but the point of disagreement has historically been on where harms related to drugs come from and how best to counter them. Given what I have presented today, it is clear that, to truly ensure everyone's safety, health and well-being, Ireland must decriminalise drug use and possession and legalise and regulate all drugs, and this must be done while investing heavily in communities, youth-friendly harm-reduction services, evidence-based drug education and prevention, and non-coerced or non-forced drug treatment. I thank the committee. I am open to answering questions members might have.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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We agreed that there would be flexibility. I saw Deputy Gould come in and leave again, and I am aware that he is having difficulties. Is there any time that suits him?
Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I offered to swap with him but he said it is fine.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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We will just use the agreed running order. If somebody comes in, we will deal with it then. The first member to contribute shall be Senator Ruane.
Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank our guests for the presentations. A committee like this can really create a big change domestically because it gives us an opportunity to consider what is done in other countries and obtain expert evidence from people who have been working not only domestically but also on an international scale. It is important for us to hear this evidence because we do not have the same history as the other countries. A body of research does not exist in Ireland, so we are very reliant on looking to other regions. My first set of questions is specifically for Ms Eastwood and Professor Stevens. My second round of questions will be much more targeted on the youth aspect. After the second round of questions, I may address Ms Lawlor.
My questions for both Ms Eastwood and Professor Stevens are similar. Professor Stevens referred to the questions we may have to explore. Regarding one of those questions, we are very lucky considering what the citizens' assembly recommended regarding types of drugs. It was very clear that it is not about the substance but about the person and that the conversation on decriminalisation should not veer off into determining what substances should be decriminalised. The moment we start talking about that, we isolate already very vulnerable communities. I am referring to drugs like crack cocaine and heroin, or drugs used in more concentrated ways in communities that are really vulnerable or that have experienced decades of deprivation. It is great that the citizens' assembly has recognised that these should not be left out of the loop in the conversation and that the focus of the conversation should be kept on the decriminalisation of all drugs.
On the question of whether there should be decriminalisation or, say, diversion, people sometimes believe diversion is the do-good option, that it gives somebody a chance to get well and that it is the option we should initially choose. However, once faced with the evidence and an understanding of the impact of both options, people come around to an understanding of why there is a really big difference between the two from a health perspective. This is also the case from a policing perspective because if something stays on the Statute Book, it will always be within the gift of the Garda and Judiciary as to whether they apply the law. It will always be at their discretion under a diversion model. Could both speakers speak a little about the evidence from a health perspective regarding why decriminalisation is preferable to diversion?
Professor Alex Stevens:
I completely agree with the point that all drugs should be covered by decriminalisation. Most countries that have decriminalised drug possession have done so for all substances, recognising the argument the Senator has just made. It does not make any sense to criminalise people for the position of any drug. Making an exception for cannabis does not make any sense either.
On diversion, it is interesting that there is a danger of something criminologists refer to as net widening, which is the idea that providing the police with an alternative to use against people who use drugs might increase the criminal justice interventions in people's lives, especially if there are penalties for non-compliance. As I mentioned earlier, it seems rather counterproductive, if one has decided it is not worth punishing people for the possession of drugs, to then punish them for not complying with the sanction that has been put in place.
There is evidence, for example, from Australia where there was an expiation scheme in one of the states whereby instead of getting arrested, people got a ticket and a small fine to pay. The problem was that it led to net widening. It was easier for the police to give these tickets than to arrest so they increased the numbers of tickets they gave compared to the previous number of arrests and because a lot of the people could not afford to pay the fines, they ended up being criminalised for non-payment of the ticket rather than for the original possession offence. This is why it is so important to look at the details of the schemes to ensure that there are not unintended consequences and recriminalisation of the people who use drugs. As the Senator stated so eloquently, these people often have problems that are not going to be helped by adding yet another criminal record to the complex range of issues that they face.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I agree with everything Professor Stevens said. I thank the Senator for her intervention and agree that it has to apply to all substances. It comes down to what kind of drug policy we want. What do we want to achieve with our drug policy? What we should want to achieve is a reduction in harm. We know that the greatest level of harm exists, in terms of health, in overdose deaths so by not decriminalising opioids, crack cocaine, and cocaine, we are failing in our approach to reduce that specific harm. It is not necessarily the case that decriminalisation reduces deaths but that it creates an environment where people can come forward and get the treatment they need. It is criminalisation that pushes people away from that support.
When we look at diversion, there is some evidence from US diversion schemes that there is a reluctance among people to participate. If it becomes one of those "if you opt in, you opt out" schemes and you continue with the criminal justice path, people will not participate because they do not trust the schemes given they are associated with policing. There are also questions to be asked as to whether people should be diverted into health interventions. If nine out of ten people who use drugs have no problem with their drug use, according to UN data, are we unnecessarily burdening treatment services that are stretched as a result of the current public health crisis that we are facing around opioid and other drug harms? For example, Portugal has a dissuasion committee but it is worth noting that almost two thirds of cases that are brought before that committee are suspended, which means that the person does not get any intervention. There is no penalty associated with the act.
The real crux of this is around police discretion within diversion schemes. Most schemes will operate on police discretion and often it is the communities that have been most harmed by criminalisation, that have been subjected to over-policing, and where we see the inequitable application of the law, that continue to be criminalised. While there is not too much evidence on drug diversion schemes themselves, there is research from New South Wales that looked at a broader youth diversion scheme, which found that indigenous youths were two times more likely to receive a court summons than be diverted. We see that discretion is recreating the harms that we see with criminalisation or is re-embedding those harms. At the same time, data that-----
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I am sorry to interrupt but I must ask you to wrap up your response.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
That is absolutely fine. I would point to the issue of police discretion and also to the idea of escalated approaches within diversion schemes, like the one where on the first occasion people receive a warning, on the second occasion, they receive a fine and on the third, a prosecution. In those circumstances we are more likely to see people who are dependent coming through that route and therefore we are essentially criminalising drug dependency. That is something we really need to avoid.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Eastwood. If Ms Lawlor wants to come in on this specific question, I must ask her to be very brief because I want to move on to the next member.
Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their compelling statements. Nobody listening in will disagree that the war on drugs has failed. As Ms Eastwood said, prohibition is not working and punitive policies are killing people. Nobody can disagree with that. I have a couple of questions for Professor Stevens initially. He said that it is not just a question of a binary choice between prohibition and legalisation and that is good to know. It is good to have that context and to know that there is wriggle room in relation to policies going forward. I ask him to elaborate on which intermediary policy options are appropriate in an Irish context today. Has anything changed since the report he produced in 2018 and what legal steps may be required?
Professor Alex Stevens:
I will give it a try. In general, and including in the Irish context, I see no reason to continue the criminalisation of people who use drugs for simple possession. As I have said in my statement, there is little or no evidence that threatening people with punishment just for the use of drugs reduces the use of drugs. There are good reasons it does not work. We have known for centuries in criminology that to be effective, punishment needs to be certain and swift rather than severe. Given the inevitably limited capacity of the police to catch more than a tiny proportion of people who use drugs or a tiny proportion of the incidence of drug use, it is very unlikely that it will ever be certain or swift that anyone using drugs will be caught doing so. Most people who are involved in drug use do not see a realistic prospect that they will be caught and, therefore, there is no deterrent. In terms of the people who get caught, however severe the punishment of them, it does not generalise to a general deterrent against drug use. There is a logical mechanism for the failure of criminalisation of people who use drugs to actually reduce drug use. Therefore, for Ireland or for any other country, I would recommend decriminalisation of the use and possession of drugs. The simplest way to do that is to change the law to remove the criminal offence of possession from the law. The other options that I have mentioned, such as depenalisation and diversion, will always be open to the discretion of police and prosecutors. We do not have very good evidence from Ireland because no evidence is kept, as far as I am aware, on the ethnicity or the part of the population that people are coming from but we know from many other countries, including my own unfortunately, that when there is discretion, there is inequality. If there is to be a fair drug policy, the de jure decriminalisation of drug possession is more likely to achieve such an outcome.
Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Does Professor Stevens have any international best practice examples of how possession for personal use was calculated? Was it by amount, by weight or by cost?
Professor Alex Stevens:
My colleague, Dr. Caitlin Hughes from Flinders University, has done quite a lot of research on this and has shown how fiendishly difficult it is to come up with a simple number that distinguishes use and possession from sale and supply of these substances. The most sensible thing to do, unusually, is to follow the English example. I am not a great fan of British drug policy but it does impose the burden on the prosecution to prove that a person has intent to supply. It is not hard to do that. If a person has scales, a list of customers and lots of text messages on his or her phone that are obviously drug orders, it is pretty easy to prove that he or she is not just in possession but has intent to supply. That is a much more reliable way of distinguishing supply from possession than just setting an arbitrary weight limit. My recommendation would be to impose that burden of proof on the prosecution and not to use an arbitrary weight limit.
Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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One of the other issues that needs to be considered in the context of decriminalisation is the use of drugs in public spaces.
Is there international best practice, examples of how that worked or different ways of doing it, where there were or were not punitive responses to using drugs in a public space?
Professor Alex Stevens:
Yes, this is a pretty murky area because there is a danger, as has been shown by recent examples in Canada, that criminalising use in public spaces while decriminalising possession, essentially criminalises people who are homeless, because they do not have anywhere else to use, and creates large inequalities between people who have and do not have private spaces in which to use these substances. On the other hand, it is fairly well established that people do not like to see people using drugs in public spaces. However, there are plenty of things people do not like to see happening in public spaces and the police are well capable of dealing with them without criminalising people. Through the use of park by-laws and moving people on, one can put a lid on the problem of public drug use without recriminalising people who use drugs.
Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Where decriminalisation has come in, has it led to a decrease in stop and search activities for the general public? When I was growing up, it was a common occurrence in my area. Going to the shop was like running the gauntlet.
Professor Alex Stevens:
There is quite a lot of research from the United States that shows that decriminalising the possession of drugs is effective in reducing the arrests and therefore criminal records, fines and other punishments people have to experience for drug possession. The effect on stop and search activities is less certain. One of my PhD students has been doing some research on this recently and one of the experienced police officers she interviewed told her that if she put someone in front of them that they would find a reason to stop and search them. There is no automatic link between removing criminalisation of drug use and eliminating all the stop and search activities that are done for drug use. In England, more than half of stop and search activities are done for simple drug possession. It is therefore likely that by decriminalising drug possession, we would see a reduction in stop and search activities and the people who would benefit most from that are those who live in marginalised and working class communities that are over-policed. However, it would not eliminate stop and search activities or the ability of the police to get their hands in pockets because the police are pretty skilled at doing that, no matter what the legal basis is.
Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for joining us this morning, their opening statements and helping us with our deliberations. As was correctly pointed out, Ireland has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. It is shameful and unacceptable and we have been tasked with trying to come up with a meaningful response to help to reduce that harm and those deaths. Drugs are literally killing our most vulnerable people and robbing them of their dignity and their mental health, and their families. It is truly distressing.
We have had a criminalisation and penalisation approach to drugs. I heard all the witnesses' insightful contributions so I will focus my questions on the proposal to legalise and regulate drugs. I would like to understand more. Perhaps Professor Stevens will respond first and give examples of where legalisation and regulation of all drugs have taken place and what the cost and benefit of that has been.
Professor Alex Stevens:
As far as I know, there is no place in the world that has legalised all drugs, unless the Senator considers the medical market to be a full legalisation. For example, there is a legal market for heroin. It is done by prescription. Normally, the legalisation that has taken place has focused on cannabis. There has been some legalisation of psilocybin in magic mushrooms, for example, in the Netherlands and Australia.
If we focus on cannabis, a wide range of options are in use internationally. The Germans have just legalised the possession, production and sale of cannabis, but only in specific circumstances. For example, it is okay for private citizens to cultivate a small number of plants and even to share their allowance by adopting what is known as the cannabis social club model. That has also occurred in Belgium and Spain, where people have used the fact that they are allowed to grow a certain number of plants to pool their allowance and share it between them and that becomes a kind of self-producing co-operative model. That is one extreme of the most tightly controlled model.
People can do that in Uruguay but there is also a system in Uruguay of licensed sellers and licensed buyers. In Uruguay, people who have a licence to do so can buy cannabis legally, if they are doing so from a business that has a licence to produce. That is a rather contrasting and more limited model than the one in some of the states in America. For example, in California there is a much more free market model, where we have seen a great diversification of cannabis products, some of which have extremely high potencies. There is also a rather peculiar situation in America where because cannabis is illegal at a federal level, there is no way to control advertising, so quite a lot of open promotion and advertising of cannabis can be seen.
In the evidence on what are known as temptation goods, which include such things as tobacco and alcohol, there is a fairly clear link between advertising, marketing and price promotion and increased use. There are models of the legalisation of cannabis that we would expect to increase use, because that is what we have seen with other temptation goods when there is a free market. However, it is not necessary to legalise using a free market approach. It is possible to have a much more restrictive means of enabling people to get a legal supply of cannabis without being punished either for production or possession.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
There are some interesting models to look at from the US. In the European context, EU member states are limited in what they can do around legalisation of cannabis because of EU law. There is a 2004 law that requires member states to restrict the production of drugs for commercial purposes. That means that Germany has had to approach the social clubs as a model, which many of us are interested in because it reduces the risk of commercialisation and potentially allows access. The impact on prevalence will be interesting to see within that context.
In the US we have seen an interesting mixture of models across the states. More recently, we saw moves by New York, Illinois and Massachusetts to do a social equity approach, whereby the model should seek to allow legal access to cannabis, but should then attempt to repair some of the harms that have been done by prohibition on communities that have suffered because of the war on drugs. For example, it allows people who have criminal records for cannabis-related offences to get licences. It provides taxation revenue into communities that have been over-policed, investing in education, health and community projects. In New York, for example, the participation of corporate actors has been banned for a five-year period to allow the regulated environment to benefit these different actors. For example, in New York the first licence went to a HIV NGO that works with the African-American community. We are seeing really interesting economic models that seek, through reparative approaches, to bring the benefits of the economy closer to the ground, which is really interesting and it is something we have not seen in other goods and products. There is potential for us to see how we could benefit communities through regulation.
On prevalence, the evidence is quite mixed in how it affects adolescents. Professor Stevens might confirm that. However, we are seeing increases. Interestingly, the generation that is using it most and has accessed these new markets is those in their 60s, 70s and 80s. There is some evidence that they are choosing to do that rather than use traditional medicines. That is an interesting demographic that has been one of the drivers of increased prevalence in the US and Canada.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which are much appreciated. I will address my questions to Ms Lawlor first. She studied at UCC. As a Corkman, that is a good starting point. In her submission she stated, "Ireland's own Garda diversion scheme provides some insight into the benefits of diverting young people away from criminal systems, with a vast majority of adolescents who go through this scheme not reoffending in their lifetime, evidence that investing in personal development, instead of punishment, works". Will she expand on that and her findings?
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I thank the Deputy for the question. I did not produce this research myself. I recently became aware of it through the Youth Workers Against Prohibition organisation. The main point I was trying to make was to hone in on something Ireland is doing that benefits under-18s regarding drug policy, which is diversion. It evidences that if we do not put children through the criminal system and instead focuses on personal development, education and building bonds back with their family members, that increases their likelihood of staying away from criminal markets. However, the reason I said it only goes so far is that the criminal markets still exist. The pull of a criminal market, particularly in lower socioeconomic communities, is so strong when it is seen as, and often is, the most lucrative way to earn money. A lot of young people and children look up to the people in the communities and criminal gangs who have more money. As a child, you idolise. I am speaking from a children and youth perspective - it is important that it is not just decriminalisation we need. Decriminalisation is fantastic and is needed as a basis but even in a legalised and regulated market, if the decriminalisation has not been tackled, children and young people can still be faced with criminal sanctions, depending on the age set for the regulation. It is important to decriminalise first but to disrupt criminal gangs operating in these communities and make sure children are not coerced into these gangs, their power needs to be removed from them. Moving towards a regulated market is important to protect children and young people. The diversion scheme will only help so many young people, whereas many others who are caught, stopped and searched and repeatedly offend face serious implications for the rest of their lives and their ability to take part in society.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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My next question is for Ms Eastwood. I found her research on racial discrimination in policing particularly harrowing. I had a look at the headline figures and findings. I saw a discussion on the issue of stop and search beforehand and the awful, unconscious bias that impacts this issue. To see it laid out in numbers and statistics was stark. What are the solutions to this issue? What are the interim solutions ahead of legislative change? Have there been studies on the impact of this bias?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
It is interesting. In the UK, where our research is from, it was found at the time we last published that black people were nine times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs, despite using drugs at roughly the same rate as white people. We work with young people in the centre of London. Working out how to get from home to school not knowing if they are going to be stopped and searched is a trauma for folks. It is debilitating. I cannot express enough how damaging stop and search can be to individuals. Some work has been done to try to adapt police behaviour to take the energy out of drug stop and searches. A big driver in the UK is the smell of cannabis. I do not know what the stop and search laws are in Ireland or whether there needs to be reasonable suspicion, but if that is the case, I suspect the smell of cannabis is probably an experience that is pretty common. One piece of work we did with the College of Policing was to bring in professional guidance standards for police officers that would state explicitly that the smell of cannabis should not be the sole ground for stop and search. That came into effect and many police forces were not welcoming of that guidance. We saw a move towards using a second ground. Officers would say they could smell cannabis but that someone also had red eyes, ignoring possible hay fever or whatever. The police found a way around it. We saw, in the end, that the police forces were not happy with this guidance so it was eventually watered down.
There have been public outcomes in the UK. Officers have had to prove their effectiveness through the number of interactions they take, including stop and search. That was abolished but it did not affect stop and search numbers; rather, they went back up in recent years. It is about police officers working out how to demonstrate they are effective in their jobs. My concern is that we can tinker at the sidelines but without legislative reform, we will not get to the crux of the issue. The evidence in the US is that decriminalisation and regulation have reduced police contact with communities.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Eastwood. Professor Stevens wishes to come in. I ask him to be brief.
Professor Alex Stevens:
I was hoping to comment on the Deputy's question about young people and draw the attention of the committee to the excellent research by Professors Susan McVie and Lesley McAra in the Edinburgh study, "The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime". It has the fascinating finding that taking the example of 14-year-olds involved in low-level offending, the ones caught by the police have the worst outcomes in terms of reoffending. Much of that is around low-level drug offences. The problem with diversion is that it still includes adverse contact between young people and the police, which we want to avoid. The lesson from the Scottish research, which has been taken up avidly by the Scottish Government, is that we should reduce the involvement of criminal justice agencies in young people's lives if we want to avoid bad outcomes for those young people.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Professor Stevens. I hope to get to a second round. I thank Deputy Gould. I call Deputy Hourigan.
Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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I welcome our witnesses. I would like to stay on the issue of legislation and supply. My questions are for all three witnesses. I will be honest; the option of decriminalisation poses a worry for some people insofar as we would clear the decks and allow a supply chain to operate over which we have no control. What is the international evidence or what has been seen in different regions where there has been decriminalisation of use but no corresponding addressing of or engagement with the supply chain? What might that mean for communities? Perhaps we could speak about the impacts on policing, in terms of the issue of decriminalisation, where there is a supply chain issue and no possibility for the police to engage with users as a way of following the chain up to the gangs supplying.
At last week's meeting, I put a question on potency to some of the departmental officials. Does removing the focus for police on low-level use mean that they can reorganise their focus to look at things like potency? Based on last week's discussion, it seems that there is no engagement in respect of the matter of potency.
If there is legalisation in relation to most drugs, do we envisage that having an impact on treatment for addiction? I refer, for example, to things like access to heroin addiction programmes? Those questions are for all three witnesses.
Professor Alex Stevens:
In responding to the Deputy's question, I will refer to two examples that are decades old but that are still interesting. One is from Portugal and the other is from Lambeth in South London. Generally, there is no evidence that decriminalisation has much of an effect on the illicit market. There is no particular mechanism by which decriminalisation of possession would affect the illicit market. It does not increase use or demand, so there is no evidence of increase in the size of the illicit market. On the other hand, it does not do anything to reduce the harm of the illicit market because the incentives for the high profits and the violence that sometimes goes with those high profits are not reduced either.
Let us consider the Portuguese example. Effects were observed, for example, on drug-related deaths following the range of policies Portugal introduced in 2001 on the basis of an expert committee that looked into what was then an HIV crisis among people who use drugs. People often ascribe the positive effects of the Portuguese policy, which include a dramatic reduction in HIV infections and significant reductions in drug-related deaths, to decriminalisation. Decriminalisation was obviously a significant part of that, but there was also a simultaneous increase in support not just for people who use drugs but all people suffering economic harm. There was the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income. There were significant investments in social housing as well as a dramatic increase in the number of people in opioid-substitution therapy, largely involving methadone. Those things would be expected to lead to a reduction in drug-related problems and drug-related deaths, and indeed they did. It is argued that decriminalisation was important in enabling those things to happen by not deterring people from coming forward and saying, "I've got a problem with drugs; I need help." That is a way in which the illicit market was left in place but public health harms were reduced by a combination of decriminalisation, investment in social support and treatment.
Regarding what that does to the policing of the drug market, it is interesting that one of the explicit aims was to shift attention away from low-level drug possession towards the higher end of the market. There was some concern in the Portuguese police that not being able to get hands in the pockets of low-level drug users and ask questions about who they got their drugs from would reduce its efficiency in catching high-level dealers. That did not turn out to be the case. What we saw in Portugal was a dramatic reduction in the numbers of seizures but quite a large increase in the amounts seized, suggesting that the police were successful in shifting their attention from taking small amounts of cannabis away from many people to capturing large quantities of cocaine coming into the country and supplying the European market.
There is a parallel here with the Lambeth experiment in 2001 whereby the police in Brixton in South London decided it was better to spend their limited resources on offences which were more harmful to the community than on dealing people possessing small amounts of cannabis. The explicit intention was to shift police resources to more serious offences. What was seen was indeed a reduction in offences like burglary because the police was able to divert its attention away from spending quite a lot of time talking mostly to young black men on the street about their cannabis use and to looking at other forms of crime instead. While there is not a mechanism by which decriminalisation would affect the illicit market, there is a mechanism by which one might make better use of police time by not focusing on low-level drug possession.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I ask the other two witnesses to be very brief and to take no more than a minute each. There will be a second round of questions and Deputy Hourigan will have an opportunity to expand on those issues.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
While I do not think this is what Deputy Hourigan was doing, people often will set it up as decriminalisation or legalisation. There must be a spectrum within the policy goals. For example, Canada has regulated cannabis but it still criminalises people for possession of cannabis outside of the legal market.
On potency, Portugal amended its laws last year. It brought fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the decriminalised model. It also abolished thresholds, which is something we may want to pick up on in other discussions. I support a regulated market, which is how we can reduce some of the harm from potency in synthetics and new drugs of harm coming into our countries. We have tools within the medical regulated sphere for prescribing diamorphine. We have a number of clients in the UK who are still on take-home diamorphine and who get really good outcomes. I would be happy to talk about that in more detail.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
As Professor Stevens stated, decriminalisation will not, in itself, disrupt the market but it allows for more access, especially for young people, to harm-reduction services. It removes the barriers, stigma and discrimination. It also works towards systems that are able to lower the age of consent for accessing harm reduction more widely. Regarding legalisation and links to drug treatment, when we look at the young people's issue it is important to make sure that treatment is not forced or coerced. It includes informed consent for young people and people under 18, and it needs to be tailored to young people. Within any system we need this to exist for their recovery. Recovery is different for everyone; it is not always abstinence. Sometimes it means reduced chaotic use. It is hard to give examples for young people around the world because it is not really there. I am giving the best-informed information I can.
Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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I thank Ms Lawlor and Professor Stevens. I particularly welcome Ms Eastwood. I guess that is a northern accent. It is great to hear somebody talk authoritatively on this issue. Does international evidence show that sanctions attached to diversion work? What is the position regarding the discretionary element when it comes to diversion?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I am not sure there is very clear evidence in respect of sanctions. Professor Stevens would know way more about this than I would. If we regard drug dependency as fundamentally a health issue, then why are we punishing people with sanctions? I keep coming back to that issue. We all recognise drug dependency and we recognise that most people do not have dependency issues. If they do not have dependency issues, why are we putting an extra burden on the State in managing sanctions? Those are more technical and philosophical questions. I do not think there is massive evidence on which sanctions achieve what.
In terms of the discretionary nature and the idea of having an escalated approach, as we have mentioned a number of times, the problem is that we will continue to get over-policing of communities. This comes back to the point I made earlier about fear of accessing services. If police are still primarily responsible for enforcement, even in respect of these civil approaches, some people will remain unwilling to come forward for emergency help or for treatment for fear of being detected. This does not resolve that problem in the way decriminalisation clearly can.
Professor Alex Stevens:
I agree with Ms Eastwood that we do not have good evidence that escalating sanctions works.
I will make a general, almost philosophical, point here that if we do not have good evidence that a punishment works, we should not be using it. Punishments are directly intended to cause harm, and we should not be causing harm to people unless we have very good evidence that there is a justification for that. In the absence of evidence that escalating punishments work or even that the punishment for possession works, we should not be doing it.
Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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I thank the witnesses. My second question has two parts. In the expert opinion of our witnesses, is there anything in current policy that is positive? If we maintain any form of status quo, is there anything positive in doing that? The witnesses can provide a very short answer in that regard if they want. Do they think that the citizens' assembly recommendations go far enough?
Professor Alex Stevens:
I will start with the positives. There is a very positive aspect of drug policy in Ireland and the UK which is the provision of opioid agonist therapy. This has proven repeatedly to be effective in many international settings in engaging people in treatment, keeping them in treatment and saving their lives. In the face of escalating drug-related deaths in the UK, I have been advocating for an increase in the availability and quality of opioid agonist therapy and increases in the range of options available to people. That should include methadone and buprenorphine and depot buprenorphine, known as Buvidal, but should also include a wider availability of heroin-assisted treatment and the prescription of diamorphine for people for whom buprenorphine and methadone do not work.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I will add to Professor Stevens' point about opioid-assisted therapy and harm reduction more broadly. Some of the things I have heard historically in many different countries is "Oh, we are not Portugal". Portugal invest a huge amount in treatment and decriminalised, and that is right, but it was starting from a really low base. Ireland has a much higher base and already has much of that investment in the treatment system. I will always advocate for more funding for treatment and harm reduction. You have that structure there, however, so the decriminalisation will optimise those outcomes.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I would argue, and I mentioned this earlier, that when gardaí use the diversion scheme, which only applies to a certain age group and below, it works quite well. It has evidence behind it but it needs to be brought further through decriminalisation. There is also a need to ramp up investment in communities, harm reduction and specifically youth-tailored harm reduction and drug treatment. As Ms Eastwood said, there is great investment in drug treatment in Ireland. However, we must look at how much of that is tailored towards children and young people. It is minimal, and that is reflective of the reality worldwide too.
Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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Deputy Hourigan referred to this already referred to potency and the potential for testing drugs. Which avenue provides us with the best opportunity in this regard?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
In the context of the testing of drugs, there is obviously the great work of the Loop in the UK and Australia but I would highlight WEDINOS as well. I am not sure how much the committee knows about the Welsh drug testing system, which, essentially, has been running for ten years. People can send their samples to the service and they get their results within a week. People knowing what is in their drugs is a really important harm-reduction intervention. In the UK, the restrictions very much relate to home office licences. I would encourage the Department of Health in Ireland to ensure that licences are as flexible as possible. There is no reason we should not have these in youth community centres and drug treatment centres. We need to get these into as many spaces as possible. There can be different models where there is more basic equipment on site. The results produced by this can be checked by a lab that has more sophisticated equipment in a confirmatory way. It does not have to be that expensive.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Eastwood. Unless anybody wants to come back in with any further answers on those questions, we will move on.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
When it comes to drug checking or drug testing, this needs to happen now under any model that we are talking about. We can do drug checking. It is the best way, under the current model we have for drugs in Ireland, to combat the overdose crisis and stop all these deaths. This can happen now. It can happen under any model it can happen and better because it would be more accessible if people are not afraid of being criminalised. It needs to happen now, however. It can work under the current model.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Lawlor. The next member offering is Senator Seery Kearney. If she wants somebody else to take this slot, she can wait until the next one.
Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I assumed Deputy Stanton would take Deputy Madigan's spot, but I am good to go. If Deputy Stanton would prefer to go now, that is fine. He is the better expert.
David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for being here and for their input. I was Chair of the justice committee in 2015. We visited Portugal and we compiled a report on the model in use there. In our report, we asked the Government of the day to do further research into that model. Unfortunately, not a great deal has happened in the interim. Ms Lawlor referred to the regulation of all drugs. Professor Stevens raised the issue of how this could be done. Is Ms Lawlor talking about all drugs, without exception? How would she see this working practically on the ground? If I have a health issue, I go to the doctor and get a prescription. I then go to the pharmacist and the prescription is filled. How does Ms Lawlor see the regulation of all drugs working in practical terms?
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I thank the Deputy for the question. People have different views on what this would look like. In my view and in that of my organisation, pharmacies would be the distributors. I am not as sure about the input of doctors on this. Doctors being involved would mean there would be more barriers to accessing drugs. If it would takes longer to access a drug, someone might turn to another source. In a regulated market, it would done be through Government-owned pharmacies. This would take it the market and it would not be advertised. There would be clear packaging; it would not be branded. From the youth perspective, it would not look like something from a candy store. People have fears around things being colourful and advertised in a certain way. They would be presented in the way that drugs in a pharmacy are presented. In other words, a person would have to interact with the pharmacist and they would ask if that individual had used the drug before. There would also be age restrictions, but, in general, pharmacists would as people if they had used something before, how long they have been using, whether they feel their use is chaotic, whether they would like any supports, whether they have accessed drug treatment, whether they are aware of the options for stopping use and whether they are aware of the harm reduction facilities available to make sure your use is as safe as it could be. Finally, there would be the provision of the substance itself.
When it comes to age restrictions, I think we would all agree that it needs to be 18-plus. It would depend on different drugs for different ages, but without criminalising someone who is underage and who is found in possession of a prescription drug. That is view.
David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Correct me if I am wrong, but the picture Ms Lawlor is painting is that somebody could go into a pharmacy, ask for any drug, answer a few questions, pay the money and walk out. Is she saying that any drug could be purchased in this way?
David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Is that with no restrictions whatsoever on the type of drug?
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
The things that would be more available to people would be the drugs that have the least amount of risk associated with them, such as cannabis, MDMA or psilocybin, but the risk is also linked to the policy surrounding how someone uses a drug. It is hard to separate the two - what is the harm of the policy and the lack of services, etc., and what is the harm of the drug itself. I would say that there would be more available options in terms of less risky drugs and those that are considered more risky would be a little less available. That is hard to determine. Perhaps Professor Stevens and Ms Eastwood have a better response to that.
David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Lawlor. I will tease out this further with respect to the amount that people could buy and whether they could go from one pharmacy to another and get as much as they needed. There are other issues around that.
I totally agree with the other issue that Ms Lawlor brought up here with respect to the Garda youth diversion programme. I set in place the youth justice strategy which we have working here now. If we have more resources there, it certainly will be of huge benefit to everybody.
Professor Stevens mentioned the problems with respect to the quantity of drugs that might be on the threshold with respect to diversion. In Portugal, they have a list: heroin, 1 g; methadone, 1 g; morphine, 2 g; opium, 10 g; etc. Does Professor Stevens know how they came up with that amount and how is it working? The list I referred to is the list they had in 2015. Is it still the same?
Professor Alex Stevens:
As far as I am aware, that list has been abolished, partly because of the difficulties of enforcing it and partly because of the arbitrariness that any such list is bound to employ. Take, for example, somebody who uses heroin. If I were to use heroin, the effective dose would be very low indeed because I have no tolerance to heroin. I do not use it regularly. If a person who uses large quantities of heroin every day used the amount that might even kill me, it would have very little effect on him or her because he or she has higher levels of tolerance. To have the same arbitrary weight limit for me and that person seems rather strange because it depends on the person who is taking it. Any weight threshold is bound to be arbitrary. There is that issue. There is the difficulty for the police officer of determining, by eye, what the weight is on the street. There is also the inevitable inequity between substances. This is another area that my colleague, Dr. Caitlin Hughes, has worked on. If one has different weight limits for different substances one would hope that there was some relationship between the weight and the harm, but the research Dr. Hughes has done on various international systems which include thresholds shows wide disparities between the amount of doses that are covered and the harm that would be covered by different thresholds for different drugs. As a result of the inevitable arbitrary nature of setting a weight threshold, I prefer a model which places that evidentiary burden on police and prosecutors to prove that a person has intent to supply rather than merely reading it off the weight of the substance.
David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Professor Stevens for clarifying that. I had heard that there was a change. I was not sure what it was.
Can Professor Stevens bring us up to date with what they are doing in Portugal at present with respect to this? What model are they using?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
They introduced a change in the law last year. In 2006, after five years of decriminalisation, the constitutional court decided that anybody caught above the threshold amount would have committed a criminal offence of possession. They introduced almost a two-tier system. Roll on 15 years, that has not been satisfactory because it is people who are drug-dependent who are often being caught above those thresholds. Therefore, they made a decision that, because it was not benefiting all people who use drugs and who were not suspected of supply, they wanted to abolish the thresholds or, at least, the way it is working at the minute is that the thresholds are a floor, not a ceiling. If one is caught below the threshold and there is no evidence of supply, one will automatically be diverted to the dissuasion committee. Above the thresholds, one is, therefore, diverted as well, again, in the absence of supply. It gives some police discretion to this. We are in early days of it, but it seems like a sensible approach. It reflects the international evidence of the nonsense of thresholds. It is so arbitrary. There are countries such as Mexico where it is 0.5 g of cocaine, while in countries such as Spain it is 7.5 g. There are these wide arbitrary amounts that are not based on any evidence. I absolutely agree with Professor Stevens that we should not go down the rabbit hole of thresholds.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Did I understand from Ms Eastwood's presentation up until now that she also favours a regulation approach? If so, does Ms Eastwood want to comment on the questions that Deputy Stanton asked Ms Lawlor about whether that applies to all drugs? How does Ms Eastwood see that working in practice?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
Absolutely, we support regulation. What we have seen is that the illicit market is "booming". That is the UN's word, not mine. The harms are increasing constantly. We see the increase of the harms. Therefore, we have to look at mechanisms that can reduce those harms. Decriminalisation is one. On cannabis regulation, we are building an evidence base that the sky does not fall in and levers can be put in place by Government in order to reduce harms if we see them increasing. At present, I would argue prohibition gives one an absence of control, not a presence of control.
Then we look at the other markets. For example, in the Netherlands there are conversations around cocaine regulation. I think how this would work would be one will start with trials at local levels and see what worked. Ms Lawlor described the pharmacy model. We have cannabis social clubs. Social clubs may be an appropriate model for some of the drugs, such as MDMA and some of the psychedelics. We start to build that evidence. Nobody is suggesting that we go wholesale into legalisation tomorrow. I imagine that would be difficult for politicians. It is starting to support, recognising the failure of approach, moving immediately to decriminalisation of all drugs in recognition those harms do not happen, and regulation of cannabis. I think we are getting there on cannabis.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Are there conceptual, philosophical, medical or any other reasons apart from the cowardice of politicians, which we will all take on the chin, and the difficulties it would pose for them? Does Ms Eastwood advocate for the legalisation and regulation of all drugs or some drugs? How does she see that-----
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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How would Ms Eastwood see that operating?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
In an incremental way. It would be different, depending on the drug and the harm associated with the drug. For example, with cannabis, we would have cannabis social clubs. We may want to consider, despite the EU limitations, some of the examples from the US on stores. Then we would look at MDMA and psychedelics. I would prefer, for example, a social clubs model for those. With heroin and cocaine, we would think about how to make sure we are providing products that are maybe less harmful than some of the products that are currently available on the illicit market.
The products that we have on the illicit market are a result of prohibition. With heroin, it is opium. There are a range of products one could make available. One uses taxes. One uses restrictions on access. I would prefer that we were looking at some of the opium products at the less harmful end. We should not criminalise and we should make sure that people get safe supply. For those who are drug dependent on heroin, we should be supporting diamorphine prescribing now. We can do that now.
This is not as simple as legalising all drugs. These are talking about different models in different ways with different demands depending on the person's need, whether a medical need or a consumer need. I cannot give the Cathaoirleach a clear answer on exactly what every model would look like but it is that flexibility and thinking that we need to have.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Eastwood and Deputy Stanton. I call Senator Seery Kearney.
Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I want to come back to the fact that what we are talking about here would be quite a cultural and societal shift.
When we put that inside a context that marginalised communities are most impacted by treating drugs in a criminal justice system rather than a health driven system, that suggests it is more than just treating drugs in criminal justice, it is actually about the issues within that community. The research here would show that drug use is the same across all communities and it is just that the most impact is felt in marginalised and disadvantages communities. I am cautious about the idea of us moving to a cultural change. As completely inadequate as it is at the moment, and I see it on the ground working with a drugs task force, at the same time I see the need for youth workers and providing supports in society to tackle poverty. If all of that was done, then who knows. There are other societal issues that feed into drug use and maybe we should focus on supports first. I would like to hear the comments of our guests on that.
Professor Alex Stevens:
I would love to comment. I wrote a book a few years ago called Drugs, Crime and Public Health and the final chapter is about what I call progressive decriminalisation, which sings exactly the same tune as the Senator in that these are social problems. We are not going to solve the drug problem just by how we tinker with drug laws. We need to change the context in which people make decisions about their drugs and develop problems with drugs. Another chapter of my book proves the point that the Senator has made that drug use is widespread across society but it is the marginalised and vulnerable communities who suffer the most both from problematic drug use and drug-related death, but also from the overpolicing of drug offences.
Progressive decriminalisation involves not just changing the law but providing youth services and good quality informal education in youth settings to young people. It also involves reducing poverty and homelessness, which drive problematic drug use. Alongside that, it involves gradually lessening the damage we are doing to people by criminalising them. That starts, and I think it can start immediately, by decriminalising the possession of drugs. As I have said, there is very little evidence that that would be harmful and there is lots of evidence that it would reduce the harms of criminalisation. That is what it does. Then we could take evidence-based steps towards more regulated and less punitive forms of distributing drugs.
There are philosophical issues about the freedoms of individuals and, indeed, companies to benefit and profit from these substances but I would also like to see us developing more evidence to inform these discussions. A lot of these discussions take place in the absence of evidence, partly because it has been illegal to carry out experiments on different ways of regulating substances. I am perhaps a little more concerned than my colleagues on this panel about, for example, the possibility of diverting substances which are lethal in overdose, like opioids and cocaine. There was reference, for example, to the possibility of people shopping around and getting large quantities by accumulating their supply. There are systems that you can put in place. For example, the Uruguayan licensed user model is a way that you can limit the amount of drugs that any one person can do. With modern technology it is quite easy to put those sorts of controls in place. I would like to see us starting with decriminalisation of possession and then a range of carefully designed controlled experiments about how best to regulate the supply in order to reduce the harms of the illicit market while not expanding diversion of potentially lethal substances. That would be done in the context of improving social policy, reducing poverty and improving the education that people get. To my mind, that is almost more important than changing the drug law.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
It is really important what the Senator said because if you do not invest in the communities at the same time as making policy reforms, particularly legalising and regulating, then you are not going to fulfil what is necessary or the aims of the policy reform in the first place. It is important to examine how much money and effort is being wasted. There have been good efforts made to build up these communities and ensure employability for young people in marginalised communities. These efforts to improve socioeconomic lifestyles are being wasted because of the punitive and prohibitionist policies that allow for the gangs in these communities to strive, and continue to have more power and influence than any good that you are trying to do within these communities in terms of building up the socioeconomic realities.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
We often say that drug policy is not about the drugs. For the people who are most harmed by drugs policy, it is driven by economic deprivation and social exclusion. I totally agree with the Senator's analysis of the matter.
I would also say that decriminalisation will allow for the maximisation of those policy benefits, potentially, such as investing in homelessness services. So many of our clients are evicted from homelessness services because they are drug users and because of the risk of the criminality around it. We have clients, for example, even in domestic violence situations who come through our helpline who have reported the perpetrator to the police and who then have been accused of using drugs and end up with their kids being taken into care. Our drug laws undermine many of our economic, social and public policies that are trying to support people in difficult circumstances.
Ms Lawlor made a point about investment. The UK has done an analysis that says it spends £1.6 billion on law enforcement every year on drugs and it has little to no impact on the availability of drugs. I think that money could be much better spent in our communities. I totally agree that we need to focus on that.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank the Senator for staying within the timeline and call Deputy Shanahan.
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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I thank our guests for attending but I have found this debate a bit depressing. I have three teenage children and I hoped, as part of this committee, we would figure out how to interdict young people using drugs into the future. A lot of the talk today seems to have been, and I think it was Ms Lawlor who mentioned it, that the rate of drug taking among young people is rising and that is just where we are going. Will the initiatives being discussed here actually interdict that? I have not heard that. We are trying to talk about reducing harm and we all want to do that. I would say it is a significant harm not interdicting children to become drug dependent in the future and I am not sure we are addressing that.
I have a few questions for Professor Stevens. Portugal has been mentioned a number of times, and the metrics that they are seeing in terms of decriminalisation. What is the overall rate of growth? What is the trend in drug usage across Portugal? Is Portugal an outlier compared with the rest of the European countries or is it the same? Where does it sit?
Professor Alex Stevens:
Portugal has seen variations in rates of drug use over the past 20 years. People who advocate for decriminalisation have leapt on the times when its rates decreased and people who are against decriminalisation have leapt on the times when they have increased to try to prove their respective points. One of the most interesting studies compared the trends in young people’s drug use in Poland and Portugal. Poland is an interesting case because it almost did the opposite of Portugal at in or around the same times, but their trends in young people’s drug use are similar, suggesting that the decriminalisation or criminalisation of drugs has little effect on young people’s drug use. Indeed, this was the subject of a study I published in 2019, which looked at evidence from over 115,000 young people in 38 countries and compared those countries that did or did not have more liberal approaches to the policing of cannabis. It found no difference between those countries on that basis.
It is fair to be concerned about young people’s drug use. It tends to fluctuate more than adults’ drug use. We do not know much about its drivers, but we can be fairly confident that decriminalisation is not a driver of increased drug use among young people. We know there are things that can be done to reduce risk-taking behaviour by young people, and we should put it in that context. It is not just about drug use; it is about violence and early and unwanted sex. When we talk to teenagers, which I have done in research projects, about the things they are concerned about, they all go together in a package of the risks that young people face. There are things we can do about that to support young people, for example, giving them accurate information instead of scare stories about the risks. Measures like whole-school approaches and life skills training help young people to deal with the range of challenges they face in growing up in modern society.
It is not a hopeless story. There are things we can do if we want to invest in young people's lives, in both formal and informal education. Unfortunately, in my country, the UK, we have massively cut all these services. As would be expected and as we have seen, there have been increases in drug use and violence among young people in recent years. There are things we can do to prevent that.
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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Professor Stevens mentioned the illicit market a couple of times, and we all understand exactly what is meant by that. If we are not to have that and we instead nationalise drugs policy and make drugs available under controlled circumstances, we are tacitly saying that drug-taking is something society is now okay with, for want of a better word.
Professor Alex Stevens:
I see the concern, and the criminal law is thought of as a powerful signal of what society will and will not accept. However, if we look at the example of tobacco, there have been dramatic reductions in smoking, including among young people, and it did not take the criminalisation of tobacco to do that. Effective public health education and restrictions on the availability and advertising of that substance have been very effective in reducing the use and harms of that substance. Those are similar models we could adopt if other intoxicating substances like tobacco were available legally. I think Ms Lawlor wants to comment.
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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If I make a point given that Professor Stevens mentioned tobacco, which I was going to mention, we have a particular problem in this country with the rise in vaping. Vaping was put forward as a substitute for tobacco and a way to get off it. We now have teenagers starting vaping who have never smoked cigarettes. We have seen issues with commercialising a substance when society decides it will accept it. Ireland, unfortunately, is an outlier. We are also an outlier with regard to alcohol abuse. There are societal differences, as you shift through different populations, and these have to be considered in this discussion.
On the idea of the illicit market, is it not the case that the war on drugs has been trying to cut supply? It is obvious to anybody that is not working. It is also not working at the other end, as Ms Lawlor pointed out, because we have an increase in drug-taking, even among kids who we imagine would be educated.
If drug-taking is widely countenanced in society, has anybody looked at the implications for employment or safety in employment? Are we going to have start testing everybody for drugs when they come in to work in the morning, to understand who might be informally taking drugs and doing so through a regulated source?
Professor Alex Stevens:
The Deputy mentioned vaping, which is a really interesting example. It is a controversial question as to whether those young people are being encouraged to take up nicotine, or just that those are the young people who would be smoking tobacco but instead are vaping now, which is probably is safer. There is this issue of regulation lagging behind trends in the market and so vaping has occurred and entered the market in many countries in advance of politicians and regulators putting in place adequate safeguards and then regulators having to catch up. That is certainly what has been going on in the UK. We can learn from that the lesson that it is best if politicians and regulators get ahead of the game and develop the models they want to see in place and how they are going to put limitations in place in advance of these legal markets developing. That is something I encourage members to think about, namely, preparing for the future of the drug market, rather than reacting to the last drug war.
With regard to impairment, we know there is widespread use of alcohol in society. You would not want people to be in charge of heavy plant or diagnosing a medical complaint if they were drunk. We can learn from the regulations already in place for impairing substances that are intoxicating. That is not something we are not familiar with.
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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We have people who are functioning alcoholics and we may have functioning people on opioids who are in employment. Are the toxicity and rate of dependency not generally higher as you get up to the harder drugs?
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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That is as an interdiction to opiate use.
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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What Professor Stevens just said is as an interdiction to opiate use. I am talking about people who are actually taking opiates or who are dependent on opiates or any other drugs.
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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Is the point that their drug use is being medically regulated and they are being medically treated?
Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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I am talking about those who are not.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I am conscious that Ms Lawlor wanted to comment. I ask her to be brief. I am sorry; I know I am always asking her to be brief. Maybe she did not wish to comment?
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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There seems to be a problem with the line.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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We will move on because there seems to be a problem with Ms Lawlor's line. I am sorry. I thought I had seen her indicate she wanted to come in. Senator Sherlock is next.
Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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A huge thanks to Ms Lawlor, Ms Eastwood and Professor Stevens for attending this morning. There was certainly a very powerful call by all three of them with regard to dealing with the reality of drug use in our societies, rather than continuing with the fiction that our criminal justice system has.
I am particularly interested in police culture and how police forces around the world have adapted to decriminalisation. In police forces where every single policeman or policewoman at all levels has been instilled with the ethic that they are engaged in the war against drugs and then, separately with regard to safety in communities, that stop and search is almost an integral part of keeping our streets safe, how have they adapted to decriminalisation? I heard Professor Stevens talk about ensuring that resources and focus go into other areas of crime prevention and detection. I would like to hear a little about how easy or difficult that process has been in police forces in places around the world where possession for personal use has been decriminalised.
Professor Alex Stevens:
I will try to be brief but I want to start again by focusing on some research we are currently doing in England with police forces which are providing diversion. We have interviewed more than 60 police officers about their use of diversion. The research reflects the international evidence that there is a mixed bag of opinions, attitudes and behaviours among police officers. Some police officers see a reduction in the criminalisation of people who use drugs as a very good thing because they see the problems those people face and they do not see the point of adding punishment to the problems the people face. Some of them also see it as a very good way of reducing the waste of their time. They just do not see it as productive. They come across people using drugs quite often in their work. They do not see any particular successes from repeated criminalisation of people who use drugs, so there is a large body of opinion within the police that would rather not have to be dealing with low-level drug possession.
There are also police officers who see a reduction in their powers to search and arrest people as something that is limiting their effectiveness. There is not much evidence of that and, as I said, we used the evidence from Portugal to show that. However, the fact that it is the police who have to implement these policies means that it is important to include them in the conversation about what these policies should look like and how best to manage these interactions between police and people on the streets. My advocacy would be to include the police in the conversation and, if you want to have a successful diversion or decriminalisation policy, you are going to have to train the police quite carefully in what is expected of them, what the limits of their powers are, and what the communities they work with want, which includes mechanisms for community accountability so that police hear from the community about what is actually happening and how they are dealing with these issues.
Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I thank Professor Stevens. Perhaps Ms Eastwood would like to contribute.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I will add to Professor Stevens's point about Portugal and the concerns the police had about not being able to access information from people who use drugs about the goings on further up the supply chain. Beyond that, police also reported that there were better community relations so people were much more willing to come forward and have a conversation with them about problems in the community regarding drugs or something else because they were less concerned that their young people or a member of their member would be arrested for drug use. There is very limited evidence in this area but we are seeing that there is the potential, at least in that context, for better community relations so that could be a positive.
Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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Ms Lawlor made a very powerful point about how drug testing needs to be available in all parts of communities. Ms Eastwood spoke about the experience in Wales. I would like to hear more about who approaches the drug testing centres and what types of drugs are involved because that is crucial in terms of understanding.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I think we have lost Ms Lawlor temporarily.
Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I will put the question to Professor Stevens and Ms Eastwood. My concern is that only some groups of people may approach drug testing centres. How do we ensure that everybody who needs to approach drug testing centres do so?
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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We can. That is good to know for Senator Sherlock, who was addressing a question to Ms Lawlor when I interrupted.
Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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My question concerned drug testing centres. Where they have been rolled out comprehensively within communities, who has been approaching the drug testing centres and what type of drugs are we talking about? We would hope that all parts of the community and not just certain drug users would approach drug testing centres.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I will leave it to my colleagues to talk about the experience in the UK where this has been implemented and evidence from there. From what we would promote at youth fairs and from what we have seen is beneficial when it comes to drug testing and any harm reduction service is that it is done within communities and there is a peer approach to it, particularly when it comes to young people. I am not talking about those under 18. It is about young people under 30 running these services and peers are at the front of these services bringing people in and informing them that there are these drug testing services available among their own community of young people who use drugs. A peer approach is a better approach to making sure services are accessible and that people trust them because they see that people in their community are also using and promoting these services so they can trust them and not wondering, "Is this going to be something that is going to catch me - the police waiting to catch me there?"
Professor Alex Stevens:
There are two particularly vulnerable populations at which we want to target drug checking services. One is people involved in drug use in the night-time economy, for example, night clubs and festivals. The other is people who are involved in dependent drug use, particularly opiates. The first group can be effectively reached by providing drug checking services at festivals and in city centres. That is something the Loop charity has been doing in the UK. It has been done for decades in the Netherlands in nightclubs and at locations in city centres where people can go and have their drugs checked. Because of the increased potency of MDMA and the very concerning possibility of adulteration of party drugs by dangerous substances, including xylazine, we need to provide this population with the information it needs to keep itself safe. The other population I am interested in consists of people who are dependent on opioids. A really good setting in which to provide drug checking for those people is overdose prevention centres, otherwise known as drug consumption rooms. We have not yet mentioned them as a mechanism for harm reduction. It is an important setting for people in those areas like Dublin with high concentrations of injection drug use. I know there are plans to open one. There have long been plans to open one in Dublin. In places like Switzerland, drug checking is provided in overdose prevention centres. In particular, since the entry of the market of fentanyl and metazene, it is extremely important that people who are considering using opioids get information about what else might in those opioids because it could easily kill them.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
To add to what Professor Eastwood said about people who are at risk of synthetic opioids, in the UK and I think in Ireland, we have seen metazene contaminate other markets beyond the opioids such as the benzodiazepine market. We need this to be in centres where people are accessing. I agree with Ms Lawlor and Professor Stevens. Within the benzodiazepine market, we have seen nitazenes come up in Xanax, which is used by young people, particularly within the student population, so I would be keen to see that we are connecting with universities and colleges to support young people to come forward and test their substances and to give them the harm reduction advice they need to stay as safe as possible. The evidence has shown that when people know what is in their drugs, if they are not what they thought they were buying, they are likely to discard those drugs. This is a really great harm reduction tool in terms of engaging people and helping them to make safer decisions.
Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. They were quite enlightening and informative about this very complex debate. Drug use is a reality. We have been trying to grapple with the situation for the past 50 years in Ireland and elsewhere. It involves how to look at different forms of stopping criminalising people because that has not worked and has been counterproductive.
My main question concerns the opposition to a different model. Obviously, the model we are talking about here is decriminalisation, regulation and everything in between. At the end of the day, it is about saving lives and making things safer for those who want to use drugs. This debate is important even for those who do not use drugs in any capacity. It is a societal issue with which we need to grapple. In this country, opposition to changing course comes in many forms. It comes in the form of a belief that the status quo is okay. It can also be a belief in being more draconian by considering harsher penalties in terms of criminalisation. Where do the witnesses see the neo-opposition to progressing this issue? The public, particularly in Ireland in the past five or six years, has moved beyond politicians. It believes that we have had 50 years of this and it does not work so we should look at something different. People have to be given an alternative. If they are given an alternative, that is a rational way of looking at things differently, people will listen and people are listening. Where do the witnesses see the opposition in terms of this issue in the next five to ten years across the world?
Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Professor Stevens has to send me the book.
Professor Alex Stevens:
It is called Drug Policy Constellations: The Role of Power and Morality in the Making of Drug Policy in the UK. It is about how a lot of the opposition to different ways of doing drug policy is based on traditionalist morality. It is unsurprising that given decades of people being told that these substances are dangerous and evil and that they ruin communities, people are fearful about different ways of doing things, particularly if they think that this different way of doing things will expand the market and bring more people into these patterns of use.
I do not believe it is helpful to dismiss those fears but we need to engage with them on the basis that people are concerned about their children. They do not want their children taking substances that might kill them. That is absolutely fair enough and so we need to think about designing methods of decriminalising and regulating drugs that do not increase the risks to children. So far the evidence suggests that decriminalisation does not increase the risks to children because it does not increase drug use. There are ways of doing legalisation and there are companies out there waiting to pounce on such opportunities that would predictably increase drug use among children. For example, if companies were allowed, as they have been in some states in the United States of America, to sell fizzy drinks and sweets infused with cannabis, the use of cannabis among young people would be expected to increase. Indeed we have seen in some states an increase in emergency hospital admissions for children because they are taking what they think are sweets. We need to be aware of the fact that people will be nervous about these. We need to address those honestly and openly. We also need to be aware that there will be people who are willing to distort the evidence in pursuit of maintaining the status quo. I will give the example of the use being made of evidence from Oregon, which decriminalised the possession of all drugs a couple of years. Since the decriminalisation in Oregon, there has been an increase in drug-related deaths and crime in that state. People are jumping on that to say, "Look what happens when you decriminalise drugs - it is a disaster." When they make that point, people are completely ignoring that there was also a pandemic that dramatically reduced drugs-induced deaths and crime and also that the fentanyl has entered the market in Oregon, which predictably increased drug-regulated deaths. When we control for the timing of the pandemic and the entry of fentanyl into the market in Oregon we do not see an increase in crime or deaths that can be attributed to the decriminalisation of drugs.
These are highly emotive and politicised debates. We need to try to engage with people openly and honestly, understand why people are concerned, and give them the information they need to be able to make their own decisions about what is best for our children and our society.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I will discuss how we talk about the fear when it comes to children and drugs, as Professor Stevens just said. Within these models we have been discussing today we are also aware that we do not want to increase drug use among children and that these reforms need to happen at the same time as the widescale implementation of drug education campaigns inside and outside of schools.
I will provide a little data. Stanford in the US conducted a study on the safety first real drug education for teens curriculum, which they implemented in a number of schools in the US. This curriculum focuses on accurate and concrete information about drugs benefits, risks, harms and how they can mitigate any risks or harms. We see this as an important strategy to reduce the harms that drugs can cause. It also recognises that there never has been, and never will be, a drug free society. As such it complements messages of abstinence with information on the safer use of drugs. When those who went through this curriculum did the evaluation afterwards, the results were that these children thought more critically about drugs and the impact of drug policies, they were empowered with information on how to make healthier choices about drugs and they possessed personal knowledge and strategies to manage risks of drugs. While it was not the point of the curriculum, the evaluation also found that those who participated in it overall reported increased knowledge about drugs and decreased personal substance use at the same time. It is, therefore, important to look at the evidence from drug education curriculums, awareness campaigns that are working and are not stigmatising and moving away from the just say no model. It is also about informing parents and those who are concerned, and politicians as parents themselves to children, and considering these models of regulation and decriminalisation. It will not just happen isolated from campaigns around drugs in general. There is a need to shift from a stigmatising messaging around drugs to actual accurate information and using the evidence of what actually helps to help mitigate drugs and risks of drugs. It is also for those who do not want to use drugs to be empowered to continue with that choice for themselves, and for those who do use to have the access to information they need to stay safe.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Ms Lawlor and Deputy Kenny. I have some questions. Professor Stevens posited that it would be very unfair to suggest it was the only reason, and that it was very far from it. He spoke about the likelihood of apprehension being low and that criminalisation was not really not really a deterrent for drug use or possession. Could that argument be made in respect of many other offences in the criminal justice system and even for relatively minor road traffic offences? Anecdotally it would seem that the risk of apprehension for speeding or not wearing a seat belt is low. Is that unique to criminalisation for possession or misuse of prescribed substances?
Professor Alex Stevens:
It is not unique to that offence. With most offences, only a very small proportion of them lead to a criminal justice outcome with murder being an exception in that they are very often apprehended. Let us take a really emotive example - and I always hesitate to do this - of sexual offences and rape. The reporting rate is increasing and in my country the detection rate is minuscule. The proportion of people who are accused and who actually get convicted is very small. That is not an argument for decriminalising sexual offences and rape. Deterrence is not the only reason that we criminalise certain offences. Some offences we criminalise because they are inherently wrong and we want to send that message. Whether someone thinks that drug possession is inherently wrong is a matter of opinion but for me and many others - indeed the millions of people who are taking drugs - it is not inherently wrong and they are not in any way near to causing the amount of harm directly to other people that sexual offences and rape do. If we accept the position that people have the right to choose what to put in their own bodies, absent any harm to other people, we are only left with the argument of deterrent.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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So it is, basically a victimless crime argument more than the deterrent argument. Is that what Professor Stevens is focusing on?
Professor Alex Stevens:
I am suggesting that it would be invidious for people to be able to make decisions about each other's consumption patterns, absent of any evidence that those decisions are affecting public health. If we do not have good evidence that criminalising drug use would increase use and public health harms, then why are we doing it?
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I take that argument. Professor Stevens posited sexual offences crimes as an example and explained why it is not a comparator. Relatively recently in Ireland we criminalised end users of prostitution. As a criminologist, is that something the professor would comment on? There is a debate as to whether people who provide sexual services for money are coerced or whether it is a free market they enter into, but according to some arguments at least, it is people deciding what they do with their own bodies and then the state intervening.
Professor Alex Stevens:
It is a controversial area of criminology in which I am not expert and Ms Eastwood probably knows more than I do on that. There is an argument to be made that the criminalisation of the purchases of sexual services is more to do with the moral condemnation of the sex industry than it is to do with evidence that it is effective in reducing the harms of that industry. Indeed there seems to be some evidence that it increases the harms of that industry.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Professor Stevens said that we should not increase the punishment for any offence if the punishment is causing harm and there is no evidence that the increase in punishment is actually acting as a deterrent. Again, there is a recent proposal - not unique to Ireland - for mandatory sentences for knife crimes.
Is there again an analogy to be drawn in that regard?
Professor Alex Stevens:
Most criminologists will tell you that increasing sentence lengths is not a good way of deterring any offence. Multiple studies across multiple countries across multiple offence categories show that increasing the lengths of sentences for offences does not necessarily deter or reduce the occurrence of those offences.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Okay, but you are making that argument specifically in the case of drugs possession, I understand.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Ms Eastwood, I see you want to come in. Maybe you want to answer those questions, but there is one other specific question I want to ask you. You have talked about reducing the impact on the rights of drug users. Drug users are criminals at the moment in Ireland because it is an offence, but is there, in your view, a right to use drugs? I appreciate that reducing the impact on the rights of drug users does not mean there is a right to use drugs, but do you think there is such a right?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I think there is a right to determine what you do with your own body as long as it does not cause harm to anyone else. I have a right to consume alcohol in the evenings if I wish to do so and do not cause harm to anyone else. That is what I think, and I think that sits within that framework of bodily autonomy.
Coming back, a Chathaoirligh, to the earlier points you raised with Professor Stevens, it is really important when we look at policy that we work out what we want to get out of our policy and what our current policies are doing. It is very clear that our current policies are not deterring use but are increasing harms. What policy levers can we put in place to decrease harms, accepting that we may not affect use? We have tried for 50 or 60 years to eradicate and suppress and have a drug-free world. It has not worked. Drug use is exponentially increasing. The markets are booming. The UNODC's annual report on drugs looks like a shareholders' report these days. This is where we are. Can we start to think about mechanisms that reduce use? It is very similar to the conversation about the criminalisation of people who buy sex. What we have seen in Sweden, where that has been introduced, is an increase in harm to sex workers, with their being pushed further away from services and further away from protection, which is exactly what we see with the criminalisation of drug possession. There are great parallels between those two policy positions.
I could go on about longer sentences as well. They are more likely to result in people committing more crimes when they come out of prison. I think there is a right to bodily autonomy. We really need to focus on what policy achieves, and I would like the policy to reduce harms, reduce hospitalisations and make people safer.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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To proceed a little on that point, you talked about the right to do something with your body once it does not cause a greater societal harm. Some medics argue that the use of drugs is inherently dangerous and leads to societal ills. We will hear from some of those medics. We will also hear from medics who may not share that viewpoint. It is a medical debate. Leaving that aside, one of the arguments from a sociological or criminological perspective is that the harm is that one is feeding an illicit market that is supplied by evil actors, namely large drug cartels, be they based in Ireland, Mexico or central Asia, and that any decriminalisation, if not accompanied by legalisation, is a tacit acceptance by the State that we have this large market, it is going to be supplied and it is going to be supplied by nefarious actors. I understand - I do not want to put words into your mouth - that that is part of your argument for regulation, other than, of course, the safety side of it. Is your position that we also have to legalise drugs? I appreciate that this view does not appear to be shared by everybody on the panel. I will allow Ms Eastwood in first, and then we will move to Ms Lawlor briefly. Then we will come back in for a second round for everybody who is here.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
There are two aspects to that. First, if you want, as a politician, as a policymaker, to reduce the harms of the illicit market, regulation has to be one of the processes that reduce those harms. Otherwise, you will just keep playing whack-a-mole for the next 60 years. That is not going to happen and things will get more harmful, as we see currently with the synthetic opioids. These are political choices.
As regards the argument about an individual choosing to use drugs that come from a harmful market, the reality is that millions of people in all countries use drugs every day. We have seen previous attempted campaigns to shame drug users. It does not work. It has not deterred drug use. When you get down to individual responsibility, there are things we do all the time as individuals that may not be particularly responsible when it comes even to alcohol and its consumption, which will lead to health harms, in many cases much greater health harms than those associated with some illicit drugs. Again, these are policy levers. I would argue that, at the moment, many states have no control over markets. If your concern is the supply side, the fact that the majority of policing time and law enforcement time is spent focused on possession offences and low-level actors in the trade is doing nothing to impact those you describe as evil actors within this economy. It is about how we make sure the policy reduces harms, as I have said, but also, if these are your aims, how do you make sure those aims are achievable? At the minute, all the resources are going to those who are at the lowest end of the market, who are arguably the most deprived and the most exploited by the market.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Lastly - I appreciate we have gone over time - Ms Lawlor, one of the ills you sought to have combated by decriminalisation was that young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are led into the illicit world of trading in drugs. Does it follow that that will be countered only by a legalisation, not just a decriminalisation? A decriminalisation will tacitly accept that a market still exists. That will have to be accompanied by a legalisation of drugs.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
Yes, that is my view. When looking at actually having impacts for the young people in the disadvantaged communities, decriminalisation will have a certain influence but will not remove the illicit drug trades from which people are still sourcing their drugs. Those trades need people to be involved in them, and often it is the children who are coerced and manipulated into these criminal gangs. It is therefore definitely not enough to decriminalise for those most disadvantaged. It will in a way leave some of those most disadvantaged a little behind. It will do net good to decriminalise, but how do we actually protect the young people in these places and make sure they are not brought into the drug trades?
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Thank you, Ms Lawlor. I appreciate, Professor Stevens, that you did not come back in but I also appreciate that earlier you made the point that you do not necessarily share those views on this issue.
I will go around for a further round. I think there are five Members present, so we will go for a full seven minutes each. I think we have the time. Maybe we will have even more time if Senator Sherlock is departing.
Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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There is so much floating around now in terms of this conversation. What we need to remember is that several different things have to happen in parallel but none should be so attached to the other that the other does not begin. I remind everyone of the earlier conversations about the importance of decriminalisation in terms of not compounding all those other things that have been built on through the past hour and a half of the conversation: poverty, drug trade, education and children.
I am conscious of bringing it back to the fact that certain matters are not dependent on other things happening. It is about making sure we keep bringing it back to that space. Most of us understand the relationship with poverty, but what some people do not understand in general relates to the idea that we are going to somehow intercept the drug trade with regulation. That is sometimes a misstep, to be honest. Who led the poor kids into the drug trade originally? We are always looking for the big bad drug dealer or whatever, when it is actually all the social context that we have been speaking about. If people have no other way to live successfully in a capitalistic world where things are important and education, cars and everything else costs money, what will replace drug dealing if it is removed from communities? None of us want to acknowledge that there is a black market that keeps some of our communities afloat in a way that the State never has. It is a double-edged sword. It is both taking from us and giving to us at the same time.
When we talk about regulation, we have to remember that regulation does not mean that some 50-year-old drug dealer who has only sold drugs since the age of 11 is going to decide that is it and he is going to set up a tech company. It does not mean that the criminality disappears. We have to remember that criminality is born from many different things in terms of social issues. When we are talking about intercepting the powerful drug gangs, we need to be honest that they were once the children who experienced poverty and found their way into a market they thought was going to give them better. What are we offering them? Is there an amnesty? Is there a drug dealer programme?
I remember speaking to the people who were introducing the legal cannabis trade in Colorado. They pointed out that if the State suddenly offers drugs on the market, they are not criminals, but if a person has been doing it in the community for years, he or she is an evil criminal with no way out. Sometimes the conversation is too abstract, rather than being rooted in reality. I am ranting and venting now and I apologise for that. What I am trying to say is that if we get to the stage where we are talking about regulation and not decriminalisation, that is when we need to ground in the alternatives for people who sell drugs, even at the very top. What are we saying that criminality transfers to? These people will not suddenly have a new CV that shows their entrepreneurial skills, which drug dealers have in bucket-loads. They have the skills of all the best entrepreneurs in the world, but they are never going to be able to apply them. That is a big and important conversation that we should have, but the committee should focus on the practical steps we can take. What are the real steps we can take to avoid compounding the harm caused by personal drug use? Of course we can have those other big, creative conversations around the drug trade.
A side point relates to what we put into our own bodies and comparing that with other things. Humans are pleasure-seeking beings and drugs provide pleasure. We also seek avoidance and medication and numbing, and drugs have provided all of those things to us. I refer to using criminal sanctions to somehow battle against what seems to be a human desire in every single community throughout the world, in every type of society, where people seek pleasure through substance use, regardless of whether that substance is illegal. This is something that might need acceptance. We need to accept that is the way it is. If the person does not harm anyone else and that pleasure is being sought within them and they are not taking from someone else, well then that is fine.
I have gone on a bit; I think that happens after listening to everyone's contributions for a while. With regard to the question around decriminalisation, can we have one or two lines that forget the last hour and a half and go back to the citizens' assembly's recommendation on decriminalising all drugs and why that is so important, regardless of all the other things we need to address?
Professor Alex Stevens:
I would like to speak in favour of the very first thing the Senator said, which was that despite all the complexities we have been discussing, especially the possible options of regulation, decriminalisation itself is a fairly simple step to take. Ms Eastwood and I have written an article called "A modest proposal to decriminalise the simple possession of drugs" in the context of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act, which is not dissimilar from the equivalent Irish Act. We recommended the simple removal from that legislation of the offence of simple possession without intent to supply. That does not depend on doing any of the other things. It does not mean we do not want to do those other things, like reducing poverty and improving drug education and informal education for young people, but it is not dependent on doing those things. By removing the offence of simple possession from the law, we could reduce the harms we are deliberately doing to people by criminalising them. What we know from the evidence is that we would not expect that to increase use or harms of drugs. Then we could have that more elaborate conversation about what else to do.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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Does somebody else want to come in there?
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I completely agree with what Professor Stevens and Senator Ruane have said. In my view, it is essential that decriminalisation happen as soon as possible. As Professor Stevens has explained, it is easy to do. It is the best way and essential to reduce the harms and allow fulfilment of young people and their rights.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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To respond to what Senator Ruane said, the citizens' assembly made a recommendation that we decriminalise and we have to give a reasoned response-----
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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It also made a recommendation that we not legalise, albeit by a narrow majority. The margin does not matter; that was their recommendation and we have to give a reasoned response to that, too. The other discussion feeds into our ability to provide a reasoned response to that. It was not just a flight of fancy.
Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I know it was not. I am just reasserting-----
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I will go to Deputy Ward unless somebody has to go to another committee.
Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chair. I will talk a bit more about practical matters. If we were to decriminalise drugs in Ireland tomorrow, it simply would not work. We do not have the necessary resources to direct people to health-led approaches. I have worked in front-line addiction services right across Dublin and outside of Dublin through the years. I have vast experience of working in services that are scrimping and saving just to supply the most basic services to vulnerable people who are accessing them. If we were to decriminalise drugs today, I do not think it would work unless we had the necessary resources.
Ms Eastwood gave the example of Portugal and stated that after decriminalisation, there was a 62% increase in the number of people accessing treatment. Was that mandatory or did diversion methods lead to that increase? She referred to Portugal starting from a low base. I would argue that Ireland is starting from a low base in the context of the funding needed to address the issue of drug use. Did Portugal significantly increase the funding? Did it change the model of funding? One of the biggest issues we have is how funding is administered to the services. At the moment it is either one-off funding or annual funding and I genuinely believe we have to move to a multi-annual approach to allow services to adapt and change and strategically plan for the future. Could Ms Eastwood comment on that?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
Yes, absolutely. The increase in treatment numbers did not result from mandatory referral to treatment or referral to the dissuasion commission. It was very much people accessing treatment because they felt they could come forward and there was investment in the services to allow them to come forward.
Portugal was starting from almost zero in that context. Ireland is ahead in that respect. The Deputy said we could not decriminalise today. That is predicated on the idea that there needs to be a health diversion for everybody who is caught in possession of drugs. The vast majority of people who will be subject to a criminal sanction will be cannabis users or people who are dependent. What we can do is to give them the information about where to go. People do not have to be referred and it does not, and should not, be mandatory because, as the Deputy said, services are already stretched and the idea of putting unnecessary additional pressure on those services when people do not need them is not a good use of public resources.
One thing about Portugal that we have not mentioned so far is that it did a cost-benefit analysis of decriminalisation. It was published in 2015. In the first ten years of decriminalisation, there was a saving of 18% in social costs, which included savings for the health system as people's health issues to do with blood-borne viruses, BBVs, or other health morbidities were dealt with. There were also savings in the criminal justice system. In the long term, decriminalisation is a cost benefit to the state. That conclusion has been repeated in other countries. I am conscious that we have spent a lot of time discussing Portugal but Spain also decriminalised drugs. It did so in the 1980s, long before Portugal did so. Spain decriminalised possession and social supply, which allows for cannabis social clubs. In that context, we have seen none of the harms to, or pressures on, services in the same way. There are many models from which we could share evidence with the committee. I hope that answers the Deputy's questions.
Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I agree wholeheartedly. I do not know the statistics but there is a cohort of people who can use drugs safely in a recreational manner on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis wherever they choose. I 100% agree with that. My point, however, is that the citizens' assembly stated that people must be led into a health-led approach. If we are putting the resources into trying to help people who do not need help, it is a waste of resources. How can we square that circle? Do we go by what the citizens' assembly has stated or do we make different recommendations? At the moment, Ireland does not have sufficient addiction and recovery resources available for the people who are looking for help to tackle those issues. How do we square that circle?
Professor Alex Stevens:
We need to decouple these issues. We should not make decriminalisation conditional on there being an adequate treatment system. Decriminalisation reduces the criminalisation of people who use drugs and, therefore, the harms and costs imposed by that. It cannot on its own increase the capacity of the treatment system but it does not increase harms even if we do not have the treatment system. Whether Ireland or any other country should boost the resources it places on the treatment system is a separate question from whether it should decriminalise. Decriminalising reduces harms and costs. It does not increase use and treatment demand on its own. Those are two separate questions and decriminalisation should not be conditional on the capacity of the treatment system.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I will add to Professor Stevens's point. In Portugal, the dissuasion commissions are simply a matter of a referral. It is a paper that goes to the dissuasion commissions. It is not that anybody goes there. Some 70% of their cases are suspended. Even for those that go forward, the penalties include a fine to be paid to a local charity, for example. There is little diversion to treatment and even when that does happen, it is voluntary. It is when the person is ready. That reflects what Professor Stevens is saying. Portugal's is not a strict system but a more flexible one. The committee could reflect some of those practices, which do not require mandatory health diversions on every occasion, in its recommendations.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses again. This has been a long session and listening to the witnesses has been enlightening. I have picked up a lot from their contributions and I thank them for that.
To follow on from Deputy Ward, some of the communities that we represent have been destroyed by drugs. There is a fear factor among those communities around decriminalisation or legalisation. The citizens' assembly made 36 recommendations. As Deputy Ward said, we do not want the Government to be able to use the report of the citizens' assembly as a way of not investing in communities that have been badly affected. We have advocated considerable investment in education, addiction and recovery services, community drug and alcohol task forces and community policing with community gardaí on the ground. We are also looking for increased investment in youth clubs, arts and sports, and measures to tackle poverty in these areas. We want to tackle the trauma caused by decades of underinvestment. All of the witnesses have touched on the stigma involved. These communities have fallen under a stigma because of the drugs trade.
We know that the war on drugs has been a complete failure. In fact, in some ways the war on drugs has made matters worse. I heard Professor Stevens say to Deputy Ward that one thing is not conditional on another. However, if you were in these communities and looking at a major change, you would be saying that surely the Government must invest. It is not a case of one or the other. It is that if the Government is going to go down this road, those things have to go together. What are the witnesses' thoughts on that?
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
I agree. We need decriminalisation and investment in communities. That is absolutely the case. As much as they need to be decoupled in the way that my colleagues have explained, they both need to happen anyway. The money saved through not using the criminal justice system for drug possession and use needs to be funnelled back into communities and into all the services the Deputy has mentioned. It is important to keep to the lens that these communities have been destroyed by drugs, as the Deputy said. Have they been destroyed by drugs or drug policy? To take a step towards ending this harm and destruction of communities, decriminalisation must happen and the profits must be funnelled back into the communities.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Following on from that, Professor Stevens said earlier that reducing penalties for drug possession does not necessarily lead to an increase in use. It is, therefore, a net positive as it reduces the harm and cost of criminalisation while not increasing the harm of drug use. Many of the points the professor has made today have been led by research. Is that right?
Professor Alex Stevens:
That conclusion is based on the review that we did for the Irish Government in 2018 when we looked at international examples of decriminalisation. Since then, we have done more research, including some research for the Swiss Government, and various other reviews have appeared which support the conclusion that there is no necessary connection between reducing the penalties for the possession of drugs and an increase in use or harm. That increases our conviction that what we told the Irish Government is 2018 remains correct. Criminalising the possession of drugs is costly and harmful, and there is very little evidence to support a suggestion that it works. It would, therefore, be a net positive to decriminalise the possession of drugs and use those resources for other things.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Professor Stevens. In her opening statement, Ms Eastwood stated, "Many governments wrongly believe that decriminalising drug possession will lead to an increase in prevalence. This is not the case."
That is following on from what Professor Stevens just said. Is that correct?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
That is absolutely correct. Work that Professor Stevens and others have done, including the European monitoring centre, has clearly shown this.
On the Deputy's point about drugs destroying communities, I understand communities have been harmed, but I think those communities are largely being affected by inequality. I agree with the Deputy that we need to invest in communities because inequality in society is one of the drivers for drug dependency. How we tackle inequality in the system should be part of a larger drugs strategy at a national level.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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My final question is for Ms Lawlor. In her submission, she stated: "The impact of criminal records on children and young people is devastating, resulting in stigma and discrimination, diminished access to education and housing, reduced prospects for future employment, and negative impacts on family relationships." Reading about those impacts is shocking.
Ms Ruby Lawlor:
Absolutely. It is harrowing. Even the fact that we have to debate whether this should happen in the first place is so upsetting when you see the damage it has been doing to communities, young people and the development of their lives. We have a right to employment and to partake in society. Criminalisation does not allow for this. It hinders it. Young people being in contact with the criminal justice system from such a young point in their lives impacts them for the rest of their lives. It has this effect for decades to come. We need to do everything we can to reduce this. Decriminalisation is absolutely the way forward as a first step to move away from doing this to children and young people. We have to stop.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms Lawlor.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I have a follow-up to what Deputy Gould was asking. Is there a greater prevalence of drug use among young people or people generally in disadvantaged communities relative to more affluent communities-----
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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-----or is it just that more affluent communities are better placed to deal with the negative effects of drug use or abuse? I do not know if it is a question that the witnesses could answer. Ms Lawlor has already said "No".
Professor Alex Stevens:
There is good evidence from longitudinal studies that drug use in general is much higher among young people, especially in their late teens and early 20s. Drug use tends to start earlier among more deprived communities but by the time people get to 16 to 18, more affluent young people use more drugs, presumably because they can afford to. If you look at the entire population, you see that drug use tends to be slightly higher among people who are in the more affluent groups, probably because they can afford to do it. Problematic drug use is more prevalent among more deprived communities because people might be using drugs in different ways for different reasons. They are more likely to be exposed to trauma, the harms of poverty and early bereavement. They are more likely to be using drugs in ways that are self-medicating and that lead to problematic patterns. It is not the case that drug use is more common among deprived communities but it is the case that problematic drug use and death are highly concentrated among deprived communities.
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
Where we have drug dependency among more affluent communities, we are less likely to see them in community drug services because they have the resources to deal with that in a much more private way. They have the social and economic capital to manage it in a way that people from poorer communities do not.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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They do not get policed.
Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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Apologies. I had to nip out to the Seanad. I have a question which might be difficult to answer. Obviously this is a shared island. Does any of the international evidence around a divergence in drug policy approaches between states with a permeable border where people cross freely, where supply markets are all-island-based, and so on, indicate what impact changes that we were to make in the Republic might have? I will be frank that there is limited political courage in the North to address this issue. Drug deaths have definitely doubled and close to tripled in the last decade, exacerbated by poverty, the anti-poverty strategy, political instability, and disinterest from respective ministers. I note that Portugal has nine in 1 million deaths, the Republic has 97 in a million deaths and, looking at the statistics, while I know it is a conurbation, deaths in the Belfast local government area are 21.1 per 100,000, which is 211 per million. Are there any thoughts or international evidence about those different jurisdictions and how the impact of changed policy may improve lives?
Professor Alex Stevens:
The cross-border effects of drug policy decisions are quite interesting but they are very different for decriminalisation and legalisation. There is no particular mechanism by which the decriminalisation of possession in the South would affect people in the North or the rest of the UK. People expressed concern in Portugal that there would be drug tourism, but people do not tend to travel just so they can avoid the risk of punishment, possibly because the risk of punishment is so low. It is different when there is legalisation and there is a market that might attract people. For example, there has long been concern from the neighbours of the Netherlands that people are travelling from Belgium, France and Germany into the Netherlands to buy cannabis that they might take back, so the border regions of those countries might see higher rates of cannabis use than the rest of the country, because they have access to a market. As far as I understand, the citizens' assembly has not recommended legalisation. It has recommended decriminalisation. There is very little by way of a mechanism that would affect cross-Border issues relating to decriminalisation.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I have one question, which is an extension of the line of questioning I was pursuing earlier. It is around the objectives of criminal law, which include deterrence, rehabilitation and so on. By our failure to condemn, we condone. The argument about decriminalisation is well made. It is still a tacit acceptance that there will be a market for what are now prescribed drugs and, in the absence of legalisation, it will be supplied by actors that I have described as evil. That may be melodramatic on my part, but generally if you operate outside the law, it is survival of the fittest, and the fittest are not often the nicest beasts in the jungle. Does that pose a problem?
Two of the contributors have argued for legalisation. If I understand Professor Stevens, he is more focused solely on decriminalisation rather than having it be wholly decoupled from legalisation. Does he see that it is an acceptance that there will be a market and that that market will be supplied by people operating outside the law? If it is illegal, of course they are operating outside the law. It will be difficult to ensure any sort of regulation or safety of supply of this substance, the use and possession of which is decriminalised.
On a separate but maybe related question, what is the evidence for it hampering efforts? There are many downsides, as have been highlighted, but in respect of search and so on, I would have thought that if a police force finds somebody in possession, it will be in a position to find out where that possession originated and thereby trace its way back to dealers and importers of drugs. Those are two separate questions I would like to pose to Professor Stevens, in particular, given he did not really get in during the previous round.
Professor Alex Stevens:
The first question related to the tacit acceptance of the existence of a drug market, while the second concerned the effectiveness of low-level drug policing in dealing with supply. I have never really understood the argument that decriminalisation is a passive or tacit acceptance of drug use, and that is for two reasons. For one, do people not know that this is happening in any event? Whether we decriminalise possession or not, we all know there is a large and growing international market in illicit substances, and whether we decriminalise it makes no difference to the existence of that. I do not really understand, therefore, what we are not accepting. Is it the reality that there is a growing market?
Another aspect of that argument about tacit acceptance is that with decriminalisation there is nothing to stop law enforcement agencies continuing to pursue those people who are involved in the production, trafficking and distribution of these substances. There is nothing to say that if we decriminalise possession, we will have to accept that violent actors will provide these substances. One can target the most violent actors and train the market to adopt less violent means of supplying these substances. That has been done in several places in the world, including New York, which expressly based its policing strategies on taking out the most violent actors. While there was a tacit acceptance there would still be drugs on the market, there was an active process of weeding out the most violent actors. I do not think this "tacit acceptance" argument flies. It does not correspond with the reality that there is going to be a market for illicit substances, and one can still do something about that, even in the context of decriminalisation.
On the effectiveness of continued criminalisation in assisting the police in their efforts to limit the scale of the illicit market, I have talked to police officers who are involved in the attempts to control illicit markets and they tell me that the information they get from people at the lowest level of the market is often unreliable and not especially useful. The market is highly fragmented and has a high number of levels in it. You have to go a long way from the person who has got less than 1 oz of cannabis or a score of heroin in their pocket to find anyone who has any substantial influence on the importation of kilograms of these substances into the market. Effective drug policing involves costly, intensive, long-term supervision of very sophisticated criminal gangs. That is a totally different operation from the sorts of information that are got from the lowest level of the market. I do not buy the argument, therefore, that decriminalisation of low-level possession is going to make a dent in the ability of law enforcement agencies to interdict large volumes of substances coming into countries.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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If Professor Stevens takes the view, as he has argued cogently, that there is a large market in drugs and that it is simply there whether we choose to acknowledge the reality or not, should that be legalised and controlled in the way legal drugs are, or should it continue to be proscribed and outside of the reach of the State?
Professor Alex Stevens:
Some activities are so harmful that they need to be illegal. For example, I would not advocate for the legal supply of arsenic in pharmacies. That would predictably lead to increased numbers of deaths. The question as to what the right model is for the supply of substances such as cocaine or lower strength coca products, or heroin or lower strength opium products, is very much an open one. We do not know what the most effective ways of distributing these substances would be in the context of the balance of individual freedom with public health harm. The only way we can find that out is by trying out some ways of doing that, and I suggest we try out the least risky ways first and then move gradually, if those least risky ways work, to more potentially risky ways. That means, for example, that we start, as I said, by decriminalising the possession of all drugs, because there is no downside to that, and then experiment with legal but quite limited ways of supplying cannabis to people, after which we might move to supplying, in quite limited ways, low-strength coca and opium products to people. As we build the evidence base, we will learn about what the actual dangers and actual benefits are. At the moment, we are operating in the dark on these issues because we have refused to take the steps that would enable us to develop the knowledge.
Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their contributions. I looked at Ms Eastwood's paper "A Quiet Revolution" and, in particular, found interesting the findings from Australia on diversion, the reduction in reoffending and the increased employment opportunities that became available through diversion. Will she comment on that?
Ms Niamh Eastwood:
I thank the Deputy. This research, which came out of Australia in the late 1990s, looked at the experiences of people who had been criminalised in one state that continued to criminalise cannabis possession, against those who had been subject to civil sanctions and a criminalised model in another state. It was found that those who had been criminalised had negative outcomes in housing, family relationships and employment, but most important, they were also much more likely to reoffend. A total of 32% of those who had been criminalised reoffended within 18 months, compared with 0% of those who had been subject to civil sanctions. We often talk, therefore, about cannabis possession offences being a gateway into the criminal justice system, increasing the likelihood of reoffending and pushing people further in.
I might also pick up on the previous question, on supply issues, if that is okay. To be clear, our organisation calls for decriminalisation first and foremost. We see the harms every day that are experienced by people who use heroin and crack cocaine, who are the majority of our clients. Criminalisation demonstrably causes worse health outcomes and social outcomes. That is our position and we start with that.
As for the supply market, I could not agree more with Senator Ruane. We often talk in very binary terms about the victim drug user and the demon drug supplier. Most drug suppliers are people who use drugs and they are often our friends or our students. It is less of a pyramid, except when we get into the producer country areas, and much more amorphous. If we want to undermine supply currently, outside of legal regulation for non-medical use, we could do that to some degree with steps such as diamorphine prescribing and the expansion of opiate substitute therapy, OST. We could make sure that for those who are dependent on opiate substances, we could control the reach of the opiate market by providing legal access through a medically prescribed model. There are currently ways, therefore, in which we can reduce the role of the supply market.
Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I thank Professor Stevens, Ms Eastwood and Ms Lawlor, who appeared at short notice, for joining us and staying with us. I propose we briefly move into private session.