IRELAND SHOULD DECRIMINALISE or legalise drugs for personal use in order to save lives, the Oireachtas Drugs Use Committee has been told.
The committee is today discussing different approaches to drug use, and what Ireland can learn from other countries.
Niamh Eastwood, Executive Director of Release – a UK charity that focuses on drug laws, told the committee that policies which criminalise drug use are “literally killing people”.
She said the “chilling effect of criminalisation” on people’s health was highlighted in recent research by the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute which found that nearly one in five students did not seek emergency help when they found themselves “in a scary situation with drugs, for fear of punishment”.
Eastwood said other research shows that half of people who died in opioid-related deaths in England and Wales had not been in contact with treatment services for at least five years prior to their death.
“I would argue there are many reasons for this. But one is that when you define people as criminals, first and foremost, they are unlikely to come forward and seek support, whether that be emergency health or whether it be treatment for dependency.
“So in our view, the policies that we currently enact through the criminal legal system are literally killing people.”
Ireland has the highest rate of drug deaths among EU member states, according to a report released earlier this month.
The European Drug Report 2024 shows that Ireland had 322 drug-induced deaths in 2020, the most recently available figures. That’s 97 deaths per million people, compared with the EU average of 22.5 deaths per one million people.
Eastwood told the committee: “Every country in Europe that has ended criminal sanctions for drug possession has significantly lowered drug-related death rates, and those countries in the region that adopt a criminal justice response have the highest rates.
“This includes Ireland who, as you know, has the highest rate of deaths unfortunately amongst EU member states at 92 per million of the population, 10 times higher than Portugal.”
Eastwood said Portugal, which decriminalised personal drug use in 2001, is probably the “best researched” country in terms of the impact of decriminalisation.
In the last 23 years, she said Portugal has “experienced significant decreases in HIV transmission rates, a 40% reduction in injecting drug use, and a 62% increase in the number of people accessing treatments”.
Sinn Féin TD Mark Ward, who has expereince working in addiction services, said Ireland could bring in decriminalisation tomorrow but it wouldn’t work without greater investment in health, recovery and community services.
Ward said many vital services are currently “scrimping and and saving just to supply the most basic services to vulnerable people”.
“At the moment, as we stand now, Ireland doesn’t have the resources available to addiction recovery services out there for the people… How do we square that circle?”
The newly-formed Oireachtas committee, which is tasked with examining how to overhaul Ireland’s approach to drugs, is holding its third meeting today.
The committee was set up to examine the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly (CA) on Drugs Use which has said the State should take a comprehensive health-led policy response to dealing with people who are in possession of drugs for personal use.
Among its 36 recommendations is a proposal that people should be referred to health and addiction services where appropriate, rather than criminalised.
The CA’s vote last year related to the possession of cannabis was the tightest – 39 people at the assembly opted for a health-led approach on the final count, while 38 opted for legalisation and regulation of cannabis.
Legalisation is the process whereby the importation, sale, purchase and use of drugs is regulated by the State in the same way as alcohol and tobacco.
Whereas a decriminalisation model would mean that drugs would remain illegal, but a person found in possession of drugs for personal use would not receive a criminal sanction.
Alex Stevens, a professor in Criminal Justice at the University of Kent and former member of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, also addressed the committee today.
Stevens said that international evidence to date indicates 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 harms and costs of criminalisation,
while not increasing the harms of drug use,” he said.
“With legalisation, there is trade-off to be had between reducing the size of the illicit market by allowing a larger and more commercial legal market, or restricting the size of the legal market through tight regulation, and so leaving much of the illicit market in place.”
Ruby Lawlor, from the international organisation Youth Rise, told the committee the global “war on drugs” has clearly failed.
These policies have not protected young people, and they have made them vulnerable to receiving criminal records, criminal sanctions and being incarcerated.
Lawlor said young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are most affected by these policies and “disproportionately stopped and searched by the gardaí, despite drug use being prevalent across all socio-wconomic backgrounds”.
“Young people in these communities and those who have been in contact with the criminal justice system report greater distrust in the gardaí, a body that is also meant to protect young people from marginalised communities.”
Lawlor said the Garda Youth Diversion Programme, which aims to prevent people under 18 involved in anti-social behaviour from committing further offences and entering into the adult criminal justice system, has seen many positive results in terms of people not reoffending.
However, she believes more needs to be done.
Diversion does not tackle the root causes and is not sufficient to truly protect young people from the harms of current drug policies, and we must go further.
Lawlor noted that the recent spike in overdoses from nitazenes in Ireland shows the risks posed by an unregulated drug market.
She is in favour of full legalisation, where personal drug use and possession would be legalised and the sale of drugs would be regulated.
When asked how this could work in practice, she said people could buy certain drugs in pharmacies.
Lawlor said: “In Ireland, we are experiencing an overdose crisis due to nitazenes in the drug supply.
“And, as seen across the pond with the devastating impact of unregulated drug markets in the USA and Canada, the heavier we prohibit and criminalise drugs and their use, the more potent drugs seep into the market, the more accessible drugs are to young people.”
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