MY SOCIAL MEDIA feed is dense with discussions about topics like addiction, trauma, connection and recovery. Videos of people like Gabor Maté talk about how our early childhood experiences shape our outcomes in life and how important compassion is in our understanding of the decisions people make in their lives.
This message resonates with me very deeply, and my algorithm knows it. I often ponder about other people who share such clips. Do they realise that we criminalise the people referred to in Ireland in these videos, and if they do realise, do they know we don’t have to? There is another way forward, and all the evidence underpins it.
I know the drug issue intimately, with drug use and addiction having been a feature in my life and my community for as long as I can remember. I have been a drug user myself at different stages in my life, thankfully evading the grasp of dependency, unlike many of my friends, too many of whom have died of drug-related causes. I have studied addiction and developed community-based programmes to support people on the path to recovery.
As a politician, I have analysed drug policy, developed relationships internationally with experts in the field of addiction, and tried to develop legislative solutions to Ireland’s prevailing punitive, prohibitionist approach to addiction. I am an expert in my lived experience and the knowledge I have gathered over 20 years of working in the field. I primarily focus on communities that have been impacted the most by drug use, underpinned by poverty and systematic failures for generations, creating conditions whereby mothers have lost, in some cases, multiple children to drug addiction.
When you hear that harrowing statistic that Ireland has the most drug deaths in Europe, two a day to be precise, just take a moment to think about the very real situation whereby some of us know scores of people who died in this way, whole communities affected. So, while the focus can often be on cannabis regulation in reports about drug use, such as the Joint Committee on Drugs Use this week, notwithstanding that addiction, drug taking and engagement with illicit markets exist across all of society.
With that in mind, I ask the reader to look at this recent report through the lens of poverty and inequality, as the intensity with which communities like mine experience the issues of drug use can often feel like an assault on the soul and the very fabric of our experiences of the world.
It is our young men killing each other, themselves and our loved ones whose days are determined by a rock. If oblivion is the destination for your drug taking, we have to create caring communities and societies that want to know why oblivion is better than reality at that moment. Community development is at the heart of the response to these complex issues. Everyone’s life has worth and value, and we must not allow the criminalisation of people whose value is already questioned by themselves from years of stigma and shame. This committee report and all its recommendations and contributors point in the same direction: care, compassion, understanding and support. Decriminalisation is at the very essence of those things.
When I was first elected to the Seanad in 2016, the concept of the decriminalisation of drug possession was a foreign one to the majority of my colleagues and, indeed, the majority of the Departmental officials I encountered. People regularly looked at me as if I had two heads, and it felt like we had a political mountain to climb to realise a more compassionate, evidence-led response to drug use in Ireland. However, I have since learned that people are open to learning more about an issue and reforming their perspectives on it so long as they are presented with compelling evidence.
Once the evidence is presented on the drugs issue specifically, decriminalisation and the institution of an actual health-led response to addiction becomes a no-brainer; when I say actual, I mean one that completely removes the offence for personal use, that takes section three of the statute books.
The Joint Committee on Drugs Use was formed earlier this year to consider the report and recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use. It is an excellent example of evidence-led engagement and policy development. From the outset, the Committee was determined to consider drug use and addiction differently than any other Oireachtas Committee previously, ensuring that we did not simply re-hash old debates and discourse with no predetermined conclusion. My colleagues and I developed a stimulating work programme that saw us incorporate perspectives on drug policy from local and international experts in addiction and recovery, policing, the legal context, research and academia, and public health and community safety. Witnesses ranged from Porto’s Police Commander to locals. Working on the ground. Many witnesses had never before presented to the Oireachtas, the joint Committee treading new ground in considering the drugs issue.
The Committee engaged in robust debate with stakeholders over the first phase of our work programme, with the second phase likely to be interrupted by the looming dissolution of the Dáil. While the Committee contains a diverse political representation and a range of perspectives on drug use, the conclusion we reached in the preparation of our interim report this week is unambiguous: our approach to drug use and addiction in Ireland, in which the drug user is criminalised, shamed and stigmatised, has failed utterly, and we need to pursue an alternative, health-led approach to problem drug use, with the decriminalisation of all drug users at the foundational core. The Committee laid out some 59 holistic recommendations and provided reasoned responses to the 36 recommendations of the Citizen Assembly on Drugs Use. I recommend reading these for a more comprehensive insight into the evidence heard and conclusions reached by the Committee.
For those of us who have spent a long time working to bring drug policy into the 21st century, seeing others reach the same conclusion has been incredibly reassuring and validating. In 2017, when I tabled my first piece of legislation to decriminalise drugs for personal possession, I never thought we would arrive at such a clear consensus. Now, our attention must turn to implementing decriminalisation as a policy through repealing Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. The government, this one or the next, must and will be expected to repeal this section and invest heavily in health-led, harm-reduction, trauma-informed and culturally appropriate drug services.
One of the myths that has acted as a barrier to achieving the decriminalisation of people who use drugs is that decriminalisation will increase drug use. There is no longer any reason for policymakers to make such statements, not when so much evidence exists to the contrary, and politicians must familiarise themselves with the evidence when talking about policy that has detrimental impacts on people’s lives, such as the criminalisation of drug use and addiction.
We must also be clear, though, that decriminalisation is not a measure to reduce drug use; it is to reduce the stigma and harm associated with drug use by the criminal justice system.
If you have a dependency issue, it is more than unlikely that police, prison or criminalisation will address that; that is not what the criminal justice system is for. Instead, it compounds it, and I have every faith in services, communities, peers and families with the right resources and structures that can respond to the needs of those who may need intervention in some way.
Even without a dependency issue or need for support, a person caught with a substance and charged under section three of the Drugs Act will have that charge on their record forever; in fact, there is no current way to erase that as it is categorised for vetting purpose alongside murder and other violent crimes. Whether you want to travel to America, volunteer at your kid’s school or soccer team or study social work, you will be vetted and, in most cases, rejected due to the possession charge.
Someone who has studied the research and given much of their life work to ensure that policy is evidence-based and independent is Professor Catherine Comiskey from the School of Nursing in Trinity, who was unequivocal in their contributions to the Committee on Drug Use when she said that there is no relationship between drug laws and the increase or decrease of drug use. For example, we have had prohibition for longer than I have been alive, and all we have seen is an increase in addiction and drug use over those decades; harsher laws do not stop drug use; in fact, I would say from my experience and the endless bodies of evidence prohibition compounds the trauma related to addiction as convictions, jail or stigma related to police stop and search has long-lasting impacts on a person’s life psychologically but also in terms of education, employment and even housing. Knowing this and profoundly understanding it, the Committee recommended the following regarding the legal framework.
The Committee also recommended that healthcare interventions should not be punitive, and this is a very crucial aspect of the conversations when we think about truly making the shift to a more compassionate approach. Forcing someone into healthcare or associating any punitive approaches to healthcare is not only in opposition to a person’s rights but also runs the risk of a negative relationship between care and the person who uses drugs. As a state and society, we must have health options available for people, but the Committee is clear in its calls that that can’t be mandated.
Dr Malinowska-Sempruch and others presented this reality in their comments to the Committee, stating the importance of trusting people who use drugs to take care of themselves when given the right resources. Decriminalisation and harm reduction measures, like providing clean syringes, have proven effective in addressing health issues, such as the HIV epidemic. However, focusing solely on health indicators might neglect broader human rights concerns, leaving individuals feeling their lives are less meaningful. A human rights-based approach is essential, and ensuring we don’t create punitive approaches to healthcare aligns with a rights-based approach. Niamh Eastwood, Executive Director of Release, also argued similarly when she said that criminalisation policies cause harm and deter individuals from seeking emergency help and treatment.
Everyone’s intentions, I imagine, are the same: reduce harm. This report calls for the appropriate pathway to reduce that reduction of harm. We as a society are beginning to accept that you can’t police your way out of addiction and its related issues: mental health, poverty, homelessness and stigma. Care, compassion and investment in structures, communities and services are the only ways to create a supportive environment for those who need it. In removing the label and implications of ‘criminal’ from a person who uses drugs, we can create the space to address the environmental conditions needed to improve the conditions of a person’s world.
You can read the Joint Oireachtas Committee Interim report here.
Lynn Ruane is an independent senator.
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