LAST UPDATE | 13 May 2023
THE CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY on Drug Use has heard that drug use is happening “everywhere”, but that people from deprived areas face more difficulties within the criminal justice system.
The second weekend of the CA is taking place in Dublin Castle today, with assembly members due to hear the lived experiences of individuals, families, communities and front-line workers.
The assembly itself was formally established in March, with the Government mandating it to examine possible policy, legislative and operational changes to Ireland’s drug policy to reduce harm on individuals, communities and wider Irish society.
This afternoon’s session began with a video detailing the experience of people impacted by drug use.
One person interviewed detailed the stigma they faced from other members of the public, saying they were treated differently on buses, trains and on the street.
“They don’t actually say it to you, but you can know what they’re thinking,” the man, who was not named, said.
Reid described the video as a “very powerful set of testimony”.
Shannon Connors, who told the assembly of her own experience with drug use, said that people from all walks of life use drugs on a regular basis, but people from more deprived areas can be more badly impacted by the criminal justice system.
“It’s happening everywhere,” Connors told the assembly.
“People like to say it’s in the lower class communities and stuff, but its not. It’s happening with people who are working up high, with barristers and solicitors.
“It’s happening with everybody… and if you’re in the system already or you’re highlighted already, you’re going to get more of a sentence than to somebody that has money or can be [bailed] out.”
She added that she suffered early childhood trauma at the age of six, before she was expelled from school at 11.
“I was always classed as the bold child,” Connors said
She told the assembly that she began to take cocaine, benzodiazepines and drink heavily but was in denial about her addiction.
Connors was attending the assembly as part of a roundtable discussion with other individuals who were impacted by drug use, including Karl Ducque, Gillian O’Donnell and Fionn Connolly-Sexton.
Ducque described his own experience using drugs, saying that he had grown up in the inner city and had faced household traumas that impacted on his behaviour in school.
He said that he was branded a “bold boy” in school for acting out for attention.
“I did start to believe that I was no good,” Ducque said, adding that he first was drawn into drug use through solvents at 11.
“That was my entry when I was about 11 years of age. It was an escape, I was in full flight from reality.”
He added that it then escalated over time and he began to take other drugs, including ecstasy before moving on to heroin.
“When you take ecstasy, for every up there’s a down and when you’re coming down, heroin was around,” Ducque said.
“I started taking heroin at about 15-16 years of age.”
Ducque said that he had lost friends and family members to drug addiction, hepatitis C and HIV.
“I really feel privileged to sit up here and share my story. It’s something I don’t shy away from,” Ducque added.
Gillian O’Donnell told the assembly that she had been born with an addiction disorder, due to her mother’s use of heroin during her pregnancy.
She said that kids carrying out drug runs between the flats was “a part of the infrastructure” of her community and that drug use was “part and parcel of the area I lived in”.
O’Donnell told the assembly that she had faced the consequences of her addiction when she received a criminal record, which saw her home and children taken from her.
“Fast forward four months later, I left Mountjoy Prison with no home, no children. I ended up in emergency accommodation,” O’Donnell said.
She said that her addiction “escalated” while in the emergency accommodation environment and she began taking crack cocaine.
“I think, you know, I was traumatised being in emergency accommodation and I was traumatised after losing my children, so the addiction escalated.
“I tried different drugs that I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been traumatised… It took ahold of me.”
Fionn Connolly-Sexton, a recent graduate, said that people need to be aware of the high pressure that is currently on younger people.
Connolly-Sexton, who had his older brother die by suicide in 2015 due to drug use, told the assembly that there were currently “immense pressures” on young people.
He said that there needed to be an understanding that relationships with drugs do not begin with cannabis, ecstasy or cocaine.
“We need to understand that people’s relationship with drugs doesn’t begin with cannabis, it doesn’t begin with ecstacy or cocaine,” Connolly-Sexton said.
“Our relationship with drugs began when we started fermenting berries and yeast many many thousands of years ago.
You can’t look down on somebody doing drugs through a pint glass.
Yesterday, a report surveying young people found that there was support for both decriminalisation of drugs as well as easier access to self-injecting facilities.
The report, led by the Department of Health, was carried out for the Citizens’ Assembly drew from both the general population as well as young people living in areas that experience high levels of drug use.
Recommendations included legalisation of cannabis, and using the resulting tax revenue to fund harm reduction and detox centres.
It also recommended that harder drugs, like cocaine and MDMA, be decriminalised for personal use as well as improving the provision of self-injecting facilities.
Tomorrow, assembly members are due to visit two treatment centres – Coolmines and Merchant’s Quay Ireland – and meet with staff and see the services in place.
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