Politicians talk about taking drugs in the same way your mam put you off getting a belly-button piercing

The recent debates around drug reform in Ireland have confirmed that there are some things you can always rely on in life: Death, taxes and politicians talking about their own drug use in such a deeply uncool way that it almost acts as a better deterrent than official government policy.

Sort of in the way your mam might have put you off getting a belly-button piercing when you were a teenager by saying she would come along and get one too.

“They’re all the rage now, can’t wait to show the girls at Zumba how trendy I am,” she would say as you went off to cancel your appointment.

Recent discussions around legalisation and decriminalistion, while the Minister for Justice announced an increase in undercover gardaí in nightclubs, unearthed the usual level-headed responses.

Brianna Parkins: I’m sick of being asked why I don’t have kids

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Cillian Murphy would like us all to know that’s just his face. Okay!

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Brianna Parkins: I fantasise about moving back in with my parents

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Brianna Parkins: Marie Kondo has fallen. Tidying up is out and wall-to-wall tat is in

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I heard calls for illegal drugs to be taxed and available in every chemist across the country next to the baby aspirin, and stretched claims that anyone who has so much as used the pub loo that had cocaine residue on the cistern was directly responsible for murders committed by narco gangs.

Then of course comes the jewel in the crown: Politicians telling us about the time they smoked the wacky baccy but only accidentally because they’d breathed in while walking past a Phish cover band playing at the student bar.

They did not inhale, though, because they were doing the Rosary at the time and the excitement of that meant they were holding their breath.

Government chief whip Hildegarde Naughton, who is also Fine Gael Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, put her money where her mouth was by overseeing a Citizens Assembly she hoped would lead to “open and honest conversation about drug use in Ireland”.

[ Cocaine now seen everywhere, ‘even in Dáil Éireann’, says Sinn Féin TD ]

She led from the front, telling members of the press, when asked, that she had tried cannabis in her 20s but had decided “it wasn’t for me”.

A common enough experience for many adults.

However, her party colleague and fellow Minister of State Neale Richmond sounded like he had a rougher experience with the Devil’s Oregano.

He admitted he “smoked cannabis a long time ago in the Netherlands” and “had a horrible experience”.

Does this make him the first Irish politician to admit to “pulling a whitey”, as we say in the medical community?

Other notable mentions include Leo Varadkar, who first opened up about his past drug use in 2010, taking care to clarify he hadn’t done them since holding elected office and citing research linking schizophrenia to cannabis. Fair enough.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin admitted he had smoked cannabis on a trip to Amsterdam and, therefore, while in a country where it was legal.

Then there’s Brian Cowen who picked up the moniker “Biffo Spliffo” by telling Hot Press: “Anyone who went to the UCD bar in the ‘70s that didn’t get a whiff of marijuana would be telling you a lie.

“I would say there were a couple of occasions when it was passed around - and, unlike President Clinton, I did inhale.”

Perhaps some other politicians are afflicted with respiratory issues that have stopped them from using marijuana effectively.

Maybe MEP Luke Ming Flanagan would be kind enough to run an orientation session next time the Dáil sits to help them overcome this.

[ Three children hospitalised in Dublin after consuming cannabis sweets ]

While more confessions might be in the pipeline, families affected by addiction (ones like mine, and maybe yours too) wait on overstretched mental health services and rare rehab beds.

Praying that they can keep their loved ones alive until help arrives.