LAST UPDATE | 14 Nov

DRUG POLICY HAS become a campaign talking point this week since Taoiseach Simon Harris took aim at Fianna Fáil’s manifesto pledge to decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use.

Fianna Fáil’s manifesto states the party would “continue to develop our health-led response to drug addiction” and “decriminalise drug possession for personal use”, without naming specific substances. When questions were raised about the party’s position, Fianna Fáil narrowed the scope of its ambition to cannabis and ruled out substances like heroin and cocaine.

The Taoiseach weighed in on Tuesday, saying: “Do we really want to move to a point, does Irish society want to move to a point, where we’re decriminalising drug taking? Not sure, and I certainly don’t.”

Harris’s position contrasts with that of a cross-party Oireachtas committee on drug use that recommended decriminalising the personal use of all illicit drugs. 

So what is Fine Gael’s record on drugs policy?

In July 2017, when Simon Harris was health minister, he launched a new strategy for dealing with drug use and alcohol addiction entitled “Reducing Harm, Supporting Recovery – a health led response to drug and alcohol use in Ireland 2017-2025”.

The strategy included a plan to set up a working group to look into new approaches to dealing with people found in possession of drugs for personal use, similar to policies implemented in Portugal and Austria, for example. 

“I am pleased to see that the strategy contains a commitment to establish a working group to consider the approaches taken in other jurisdictions to the possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use,” Harris said at the time. 

The working group returned recommendations in 2019 that led the government to implement a new approach to first-time offenders, which saw them referred to the HSE rather than the justice system.  

At the time, Harris – as health minister – described it as a “significant day” for Irish society. 

“We have to realise they are human beings. They deserve our support,” he said of drug users.

Harris is not the only senior member of Fine Gael who has recently championed a health-led approach to drug use. 

In February 2023, Minister of State at the Department of Health Hildegarde Naughton spearheaded the creation of a Citizens’ Assembly tasked with making recommendations on a range of policy areas related to drug use. 

“What we don’t want is a situation where somebody ends up in the criminal justice system, and that may be for just a small amount of drug possession. That just sets their life on a trajectory that could have gone another way,” Naughton said in an interview with The Irish Independent in January 2023.

When the Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use delivered its recommendations in October 2023, decriminalising personal use possession was among them. The assembly’s recommendation covered the possession of illicit drugs. 

Decriminalisation is not the same as legalisation. If possession of illicit drugs were decriminalised, it would still be against the law but the person would not be charged and prosecuted in the justice system. 

• See the full recommendation here

Following the recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly, a joint Oireachtas committee was set up to examine them. 

There were four Fine Gael members on the Committee on Drugs Use that signed off on 59 recommendations in an interim report last October, one of which was that “the decriminalisation of possession for personal use should apply equally to all illicit drugs”.

Another of its recommendations stated: “The Committee believes that the decriminalisation of the person for personal possession, should not result in an increase in consumption of drugs in a public area. Therefore, the Committee recommends that local authorities and An Garda Síochana are supported and empowered in strongly discouraging and reducing consumption in public areas. This should be done in an appropriate and sensitive way which considers the complex inter-relationship between problematic use and extreme deprivation and homelessness.”

The committee’s work has now ceased since the dissolution of the Dáil. 

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