Matt Shanahan urges Citizens Assembly and tougher action on dealers

I am happy to contribute to this motion from the Labour Party today on decriminalisation and drugs policy that they are proposing. Minister, we have been speaking about a drugs crisis and drug abuse in our society for many decades now. It is funny we use the word crisis which suggests something is short-term when the problem has been going on actually for decades as well we know. And it has having a terribly destructive and detrimental effect on all parts of our society. And I suppose largely it's thought about that it's confined to the poor communities and the disadvantaged when in actual fact it is spread right across society now. But certainly those who are most vulnerable seem to pay the highest price socially and economically. I think we can see the fallout of drug abuse and drug addiction. And in our own city here we don't have to walk too far from this chamber to see it in its physical form. But as other deputies have highlighted, it is right across our country now. And drug abuse and drug dealing is endemic in our society now, sad to say. And unfortunately it's very hard to know what is driving that per se, because in a lot of cases it is in very affluent parts of our society as well. But certainly for those who feel the sharp end of the drugs culture, it robs them of any future and it robs their families of any bright future for their children. And it has to be said it is driven largely by greed. And we have the ignominy in Ireland of having two of the largest drug dealing gangs in the world operating from bases in Spain, but also who have significant ties to Ireland. And we have a two-tiered drug society here in my opinion as well. We have one group who are recreational users, think of themselves as recreational users of cannabis and cocaine, and they see themselves as snorting cocaine but not being part of the drugs industry, while yet they look at those who are injecting drugs as somehow being a major part of the problem. But unfortunately everything is part of the problem, because it is dealing to this absolute conflagration of drugs in our society. And it is rampaging across our society. And if you speak at the moment to psychologists and psychiatrists, they will tell you the problems that they are seeing from cannabis use, particularly in youth, and where paranoia and extreme psychosis are becoming a problem for young teenagers who are just dabbling in cannabis alone, and yet cannabis is not considered by many to be a gateway drug. So we have a significant amount of work to do in terms of our drugs policy in this country, Minister. And I think the Citizens Assembly has to happen as a matter of urgency. We need to get a better defined public opinion as to what the problems are and what our population thinks that the government and the state can do in terms of adequate responses. But absolutely criminalising people for very small amounts of drug possession seems a retrograde step, but we must do something in terms of education. And for anybody who spends any time watching television, there is a programme on Netflix at the moment which shows the fallout of drug abuse right across the northeastern United States, particularly Iannisport and Cape Cod. One of the things that is absolutely stark within that is the affluence of families, and families who are engaged in sport and high achievers, and how they started dabbling in drugs, particularly cannabis at the early stage, and ultimately ended up at the far end of opioids. And that is because if you are dealing with drug dealers, they will present you with many options, and people who are dabbling in drugs will ultimately try one thing to another. So we need first and foremost, in my opinion, Minister far better education, and we need far better teeth in terms of the judicial system going after the high-level dealers and the importers of hard drugs. Thank you.