We’re sleepwalking into something that needs more thought
SUPERVISED injecting rooms, the first of the twin pillars of the Government’s new drugs policy, is to become reality. The second is the decriminalisation of small quantities of illegal drugs – including opiates – for personal use. In an opinion piece for the Irish Mail on Sunday’s sister paper the Irish Daily Mail in late 2015, I outlined valid arguments for and against injecting rooms and to that extent the jury is still out. I also wrote that decriminalising quantities of class A drugs – heroin, cocaine and, let’s face it, even crack cocaine – marks a seismic and potentially dangerous shift.
The arguments for injecting rooms are that they provide a safer, cleaner and more humane environment, designed to reduce the spread of HIV and other drug-related disease from sharing dirty needles. They will also remove bloody, dirty needles and other drug paraphernalia from public view (in theory anyway). But this is purely cosmetic.
The counterargument is that wherever they are located, the nearby areas will become a magnet for dealers. The open drug dealing that went on outside Dublin’s Pearse Street methadone clinic for years is a case in point. It is also fraught with legal issues. Will existing laws be amended to provide a defence for someone found in possession of a quantity of illegal drugs on route to an injection room? And how are gardaí to decide if someone is on their way to shoot up or in fact a dealer carrying individual deals?
Instead of rehabilitation and prevention – which cost money but which actually work – we get a quick-fix, sticking plaster plan.
Having worked as an investigative journalist throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, I witnessed the devastation wrought by heroin addiction on our impoverished inner cities and deprived suburbs. Having spent a considerable period of time working and lecturing in Holland and, in later years, observing the problem from a different viewpoint as a lawyer, I have some insight into the drugs issue, domestically and internationally.
But I question the Government’s thinking on this. Not from any ideological, moral or even legal standpoint. But because what’s being proposed just won’t work – even with the promise of additional funding for treatment and prevention, which few believe will ever be delivered.
We are sleepwalking into something that demands much greater research, thought and debate. If decriminalising illegal drugs could realistically help solve the problem of widespread drug addiction then the liberal Swedes would have done it years ago. They didn’t, because they know it will not work. There is no quick-fix solution.
This latest Government brainwave stems from a ‘think tank’ and from submissions to the Joint Justice Committee in 2015. The plan is based on the Portuguese model. Portugal decriminalised in 2001 and the results are by no means clearcut. Yet this is the model we are now to adopt. There is a valid argument that those caught with small quantities of drugs for personal use should not be left with a criminal record. In reality, Irish judges regularly use their discretion to apply the Probation Act or strike out charges in such cases. The Criminal Justice (Spent Convictions) Act 2016 expunges minor convictions (which includes drugs possession) after seven years.
TThis drug consumption room was opened in Paris last year HE opinion of the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association is worth heeding. Dr Eamon Keenan accepted that a criminal record for drug use brings with it adverse consequences for the user but noted that ‘the risk of a criminal record may act as a deterrent to drug use for some people’. IHCA members are clearly concerned that the current debate focuses on rights, without offering adequate consideration of the harmful effects of drug use. ‘The emergence of the new psychoactive substances (legal highs) has been noted with concern by many clinicians in Ireland and abroad. The fact that they are legal has been reported as one of the factors that people consider when they use the substance,’ he said.
Given that the good doctor’s colleagues have been at the brunt of drug-related chaos in our A&Es for years, it must be assumed that he knows what he is talking about.
The Portuguese model is viewed by some as a resounding success but there are divergent views on this. The Cato report, written by an American constitutional lawyer who spent three weeks in Portugal before returning to the US, is the one widely cited by advocates of decriminalisation.
Different conclusions were reached in another report by the Association for a Drugs-Free Portugal. It considered decriminalisation ‘an unqualified failure’ and says the lesson from Portugal to the rest of the world is ‘don’t follow us’. The author, Dr Manuel Pinto, claimed that the number of drugrelated deaths increased between 2006 and 2007, and the number of drugs-related homicides rose 45%.
And what about that other great experiment, Holland? When Holland decriminalised ‘soft’ drugs decades ago, it was supposed to reduce harm and combat the production and trafficking of recreational drugs. That worked out so well that today Holland is a major European hub for drugs transportations and home to more international drug traffickers per square mile than any other European country.
Shouldn’t we be looking to Sweden, which, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has one of the lowest drug-usage rates in the western world? Why is it that Ireland always emulates failure, not success? Perhaps the fact that the Swedish model requires infinitely more investment in prevention and treatment than a few injection rooms and the proverbial green light for opiate use (albeit in small amounts) has something to do with it. Because the truth is that, however much it is portrayed as part of an all-encompassing suite of measures (that I doubt will ever happen) this Government’s plan is every bit as dubious as John O’Donoghue’s ‘war on drugs’ back in the Nineties.
And we all saw how well that worked out, didn’t we?
2009 €282m 2015 €237m Drugs prevention and treatment-related public spending. That’s a drop of 16%.