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THE OIREACHTAS JOINT Committee on Drugs Use should be set by next month or certainly no later than April, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
The committee will consider the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use and respond to its recommendations.
The assembly, comprised 99 citizens with Reid as the chairperson, met on six occasions from April to October 2023. The meetings included 130 speakers and panellists, 250 hours of deliberations, and consideration of 800 public submissions.
The assembly voted that the State should take a comprehensive health-led policy response to dealing with people who are in possession of drugs for personal use, rather than voting for a legalisation and regulation approach.
Among its 36 recommendations is a proposal that people should be referred to health and addiction services where appropriate, rather than criminalised.
The group recommended that the possession of cannabis, mushrooms (psilocybin), cocaine and other drugs for personal use should be decriminalised.
Given the scope of the recommendations, the government thinks it would be most appropriate for the report to be examined by a special Joint Committee, rather than a standing Committee.
It will be made up of 14 members, both Senators and TDs. The independent members will be asked to nominate a chairperson as it is their turn in the rotation.
“We would expect it to be up and running next month or certainly no later than April. There are some technicalities around that. The committee is being given seven months to carry out its work and produce a report, but it does not have to take seven months.
“It could be done more quickly. It was pointed out to me by my staff who were involved in the citizen’s assembly and by the Chairman, Paul Reid, that because all of the different interest groups and experts appeared before the assembly, it is not necessarily the case that the special committee should have to do that all over again.
“Ultimately, it is going to be a decision for the members and the Chair as to whether they want to have everyone come in again or whether they would be happy enough to get it done in one day. That is their call, not ours,” Varadkar said today.
Varadkar said one “take-away’ he took from Reid is there is a need to develop an Irish model that works for Irish circumstances and not try to copy a model from any other jurisdiction.
He said Reid was also very keen to point out that while the citizen’s assembly recommended decriminalisation and a health-led approach, it made many other recommendations as well.
“He was keen that this would not just be about the issue of decriminalisation, how that works and what it would mean, important as that is,” said Varadkar.
The next steps in establishing the committee is the Government Chief Whip contacting the Ceann Comhairle to propose the establishment of the committee.
It will be up to the Dáil and Seanad to establish the Committee and appoint the Chair and members.
It is envisaged the Committee would conclude its work and report back to the Oireachtas within seven months of its first meeting, with a report expected in Q3 or Q4 of this year.
Following the conclusion of the committee’s work and the publication of its response, the Government will also publish a response to the report of the Citizens’ Assembly.
Strange set up in the pic. Do they not have an ashtray?
@SYaxJ2Ts: They like to keep it nice and dirty. We’re a world away from the glamourous multi-million dollar brands that exist in first-world countries… I think they imagine that people don’t have YouTube.
It’s always good to see there’s a Joint Committee on Drugs use
@Larry Betts: Spliffing comment…
It should definitely be at least tested for a couple of years & see what happens! It’s worth a shot, at least.
For the sake of our society and our economy, I really hope nothing will be legalised.
Legalisation will automatically lead to increase consumption, more people becoming addicted hence more need for services, more violence in our cities as drug lords will feel they have a very free hand, also a rate of work absenteism extremity high when our competitiveness is decreasing when we compare to the new economic powerhouses of EU, Poland and Romania and Ukraine after the war.
Legalisation will be an abysmal mistake.
thats all completely incorrect as most opinions are when the person making them is far removed from the issues around addiction and drug use in general…
@Stiles: no, amsterdam is preparing to ban the staff, thailand will ban it starting this summer, portugal is a different story due to quality of humans there (portuguese people are not naturally inclined to violence, as our green people are).
@Chris: who hurt you? That is so far removed from reality.
@Chris: Green people?
@Chris: you can’t smoke in the red light district, they ain’t banning nothing
@Martin Mongan: you’ve been in London too long with those double negatives
@Chris: Jesus nx thing you’ll be saying weed is a gateway drug…yawn!
@Chris: actually Amsterdam has just started legal grow sites, you just can’t smoke in the red light district is all
@Chris: So how’s the war on drugs been working out so far?
@Chris: Stop babbling nonsense. It’s always better not to weigh in on topics you clearly have zero knowledge of.
@Chris: All your missing is a dragon from your fantasy assumptions.
I thought we the taxpayers just funded a citizens assembly to produce a long winded report on drug use in Ireland. Why the fcuk do we now need another Dail committee
@Jp Cleary: It’s almost as if TDs are addicted to serving on these many committees. Seemingly, the pleasure centres of their brains are activated when expenses are mentioned, and then they just can’t help themselves…
@Jp Cleary: came here to say this exact thing. And there won’t be a single TD on the committee who is somehow better qualified to give an answer on the topic so they will need a little research task force to help them think. I reckon we should set up a committee to see if we need all the committees we set up.
@Jp Cleary: They decided that the best option was to do nothing (literally)
Smoking cannabis should be a mandatory 12 month sentence due to the rotten stink of it alone.
@Mike 100:
And any farmer that sprays slurry on a field should get 12 months too, I hate the smell of that sh!t.
Up and running, eh? Amphetamines will do that to you, alright…
All ‘drugs’ are different. The fact that they have lumped completely different substances together gives you a good indication of where this is going.
They’ll probably do f*** it up, because Ireland, but here’s hoping.
@Jak M: Never happen. Land of the begrudger.
Any yokes?
They’ll need to be on speed to be up and running by April
Conversation is too Irish and sluggish to provide respite for people this government have left wandering around in trance like states
No care, no compassion but plenty of vested interests & kicking th can down th road
Inviting people to health and addiction services for marijuana is stupid and patronising. Decriminalise people immediately. Prepare for legalisation for personal use.
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