Sir, – Recently, the state of Oregon in the US decriminalised the possession of all drugs and is offering treatment to addicts, using the tax money saved from policing and prisons, as well as tax revenue earned through regulated sale of drugs by licensed dispensaries. This model will sound familiar to some as it closely resembles the Portuguese policy. The new Biden administration in the US is also planning to end the federal prohibition of cannabis.
Why then are we in Ireland so insistent on continuing the “war on drugs”, even decades after the drugs have won?
Our punitive policies have emboldened gangs, spawned home-grown cartels with international crime connections, and make it easier for young people to acquire drugs. No street dealer cares whether they sell to a 15-year-old or a 50-year-old – or what they sell to them.
A common-sense drug policy is long overdue; one that rightly treats drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal issue.
The only way to take power from the gangs that run the Irish drug trade is to take from them the drugs that fund their activities.
We’ve drastically cut down under-age drinking through educational programmes, the imposition of licences on vendors and minimum-age consumption laws. Yet for some reason we refuse to apply the solution to another instance of the exact same problem.
In all US states that have legalised cannabis alone, youth usage fell off a cliff almost instantly. Instead of meeting potential gangsters on street corners and alleyways, young people in these jurisdictions now face the same barriers they face trying to buy alcohol. Those barriers simply do not and cannot exist under our current paradigm.
Aside from the economic and public health benefits that have been reaped in Portugal, Oregon, and other jurisdictions that have abandoned the fruitless “war on drugs”, consider also the benefits to the justice system. No longer would the courts be clogged with non-violent, drug-related cases. Prison space would be freed by people getting the help they need to kick their addictions in a healthcare setting rather than being punished for daring to have them. Garda time and resources would be freed.
Drugs are going nowhere. How much more taxpayer money, time, and resources have to be wasted before the reality sinks in? – Yours, etc,
AARON CASSIDY,
Dublin 20.