Dr. Barry Cullen:

In the citizens' assembly report, the recommendation related to this issue is recommendation 17. It is nuanced about what the legal instrument is around decriminalisation. It more or less states that it is up to others to make that decision, that is, the Oireachtas.

My view is that if we go down a route that maintains an overriding punitive model with regard to the criminal justice system, whereby it has the capacity to neutralise health interventions or the capacity of health interventions to help people deal with their housing, education, employment and social interaction, in other words, if the model of decriminalisation has a negative impact on that, it will not work. It will have a negative impact on that if it results in a resource investment that continues to extend and exacerbate some of the bad practices that are there already. That is a really possible outcome. There are some very good practices but there are some very poor practices.

There is a bigger picture here and it behoves parliamentarians to consider that bigger picture. That picture has to be about trying to change that narrative and trying to envisage turning this around by looking at a different model that involves a form of legalisation to start with, and then see how that works out. Give it time, look to other models and see what they are doing. I also advise that, in the long term, some of these models, particularly in Europe, will come knocking on the door in due course and saying, from a commercial point of view, that they have a right to provide cannabis products in Ireland, that we are blocking that through our laws, and that they will take Ireland to the competition court. They will probably do that. If we get to that point, we will be leaving it to the private market to determine the type of system. We will not be getting in quickly enough with our own public health considerations, and framing supply around the public health consideration.