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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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earlier in the week. We mentioned this Oireachtas committee, which made a recommendation to government that they decriminalise the possession of all drugs, not just cannabis and those types of drugs, but all drugs right the way through to heroin. When people are in possession of a small amount for personal use. And this is on foot of a citizens assembly that met to look at drug use and drugs.
crime and criminality and how we deal with this in Ireland. Then the government responded over the last day or so. Jennifer Murnane O'Connor is a Fianna Fáil TD. She's a Minister of State Responsibility in this area. And she said, look, this is not part of our plans in government. We are not going to decriminalise We have a few concerns.
A, we think that there still should be the possibility, it should still be part of the arsenal to pursue people in the courts if necessary. We do believe, B, in a health-led approach. We agree with that. They said as well, or Jennifer Mullane O'Connor specifically talked about, you know, concerns around the message it would send and about increases in public consumption of drug use.
There has been that evidence from some jurisdictions. Simon Harish. Harish? Simon... Harris, I'll try that again, the Tánaiste, has weighed in. Here is specifically what he had to say.
There's a group in the middle that we're not talking nearly enough about, and it's really annoying me. There's a group of people who aren't addicted to drugs and who aren't involved in gangland crime, but they're facilitating it by snorting coke, popping pills and smoking joints. And they're often in Middle Ireland, or whatever we want to call Middle Ireland. And I don't support any idea of...
that we would suggest that that behavior is appropriate because you might in my constituency or somewhere else you might buy those illegal drugs and actually not realize or care that you're funding absolute misery criminality the threats to children's lives and everything else in other communities so we'd be very careful here we need to listen to the guardi and we need to listen to the imo there's a number of complex issues here absolutely help people in relation to drug addiction 100 absolutely lock up the gangland criminals but the gangland criminals exist
because people are going around taking illegal drugs and thinking it's a consequence-free activity when it's bringing misery to many parts of society.
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Chapter 2: What recommendations did the Oireachtas committee make regarding drug decriminalisation?
Joanne, you're very welcome to the show. And thanks for taking the time to chat to us. In terms of the recommendation earlier in the week, do you think we should look at decriminalising possession of drugs?
100% no. Definitely not, no. I've been involved, not myself personally, involved in addiction, but I've had addiction in my life, all my life since I was a child. Going back to when I was a child, my mother is an alcoholic and there was five children. Because of drink, our whole family was torn apart. She left and there was five kids. We were put into homes and other kids were fostered out.
Grew up in that situation. I've grown up in that life all my life. I then got married. I had two children. One who got into addiction when he was 12. Started doing running for drug dealers. Got into addiction himself. had been in addiction for years, had been in rehab three times. He passed away from suicide going back in 2016 at the age of 21.
Not from particularly, he had no drugs in his system because he was clean for a year and a half, but he had taken alcohol and he had taken his life. I lost my daughter back in 2024, who also got into addiction early on in life through a relationship and She ended up getting a drug from the ex that had nitosine in it.
And when we went to her coroner's court, the drug that was in her system was 100 times stronger than any fentanyl or heroin on the street. So, no, absolutely not. You can't legalize these drugs. You can't decriminalize drugs and say that it's okay for personal use because there's no such thing as personal use.
Anyone using drugs, if anyone that isn't in complete and utter addiction, they're selling. So how can you justify decriminalizing every drug when they're laced with nidazine, they're laced with rat poison, they're laced with everything that you can possibly get? No, you couldn't. No. It's like living with addiction is... It's chaos. It's constant chaos. It's constant chaotic in your home.
And, like, we all know with alcohol, if you go back over generations with alcohol, look what alcohol has done to families over the years.
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Chapter 3: What concerns does the government have about decriminalising drugs?
And that's just alcohol, and you can buy that in a shop. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, alcohol... Like, I mean, you know yourself with alcohol. Before drugs became a big problem, alcohol would have been the thing in Ireland or whatever, you know, where families had broken up, where...
where you had domestic violence because of alcohol, where you had children put into care, where you had children getting hurt, people getting killed. I mean, how can you justify that? How can you even justify if somebody is stoned and behind the wheel of a car? And because it's personal use and they killed someone?
Yeah.
I mean, you've got to look at all this.
Yeah. What then do you make, Joanne, of the reasons given for decriminalisation, which is... You know, the argument, I guess the most common argument is that criminalizing, you know, the likes of your daughter, your son or anybody else involved, you know, it doesn't achieve anything. They just get up and involved in this kind of revolving door system of the courts.
And if you decriminalise it, then what you do is you replace it with this health led approach. So you try to, you don't send them down into the kind of criminal justice system. You send them down to kind of to different therapies and counselling and addiction services that might help them.
But should the addiction services, as they stand, are completely overstretched? I live in a small town of a population of 3,500 people, and out of those 3,500 people, I mean, the rise that's been in the consumption of drugs over the past five years has risen so high that they are stretched to the limits for counselling, for even getting anyone into rehab.
So, like, what they're trying to say is that they're going to help the addicts and not decriminalise the drugs, but sure... How are you going to figure out who's the addict and who's the dealer? I mean, I could be caught with five bags of weed. I'm using it for myself, but I might have sold 10 bags down the road. So how are you going to figure it out?
I have no problem going into rehab as a dealer for 28 days and get fed and found inside and come back out. I still have my runners outside. How are you going to figure that one out? Do you know what I mean? Are they going to bring the person in and say, well, we're going to do urine samples? Are they going to test the drugs? Are they going to test the drugs, like the likes of cocaine?
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Chapter 4: How does drug use in middle-class Ireland contribute to gang violence?
Just specifically on the point Simon Harris raised yesterday, which is around this, I guess the disconnect, if that's the word he used, but that's what I took from it. The disconnect maybe that exists in the minds of middle class drug users who are kind of, don't necessarily have a problem.
They're not addicted, but they're doing a bit of coke at weekends or smoking a few joints or what did he say? Popping pills. And they're appalled by gang violence. And I think genuinely appalled. It's not fake. They are. But somehow they don't connect
No, they don't connect the two. No, they don't connect the two together because they don't realise that if you're going out taking a line of coke in the weekends, it's like, surely I only use it on a Saturday night. But you don't make that connection. That never comes into it. What comes into it is addiction.
So anyone that's taken it recreational will always talk about, I'm not like those on the streets. That's what they associate it with. They associate, recreational users associate drugs when they're recreationally taking it with those on the streets, the junkies, as they call them. And I hate that word, by the way, so don't anyone come on and ridicule me. I hate that word.
Chapter 5: How do personal experiences influence opinions on drug use and decriminalisation?
But that's what they associate it to.
I'm not a junkie. Yeah, that's what they're thinking, yeah.
Yeah, but they don't associate to who they're buying the coke from and where the coke is coming from and who's supplying the coke. They don't make that connection whatsoever.
Stay with us, Joanne. Ger Redmond is on the line. Ger, broadly then, before we talk about Simon Harris or your own experience, just on that recommendation from the Oireachtas Committee, do you think that we should consider decriminalising possession for personal use?
I do, to a certain extent. Like, I obviously don't agree with drugs. You know, I think we're all inquisitive as young teenagers to try new things out. And I think when you get conviction, that can send you down the wrong road, you know.
And I just think, from a personal point of view, I don't think we should be receiving convictions for that because, as I said, it can send you down the wrong road. But at the same time, I think there still needs to be an intervention, like a drug rehabilitation, or if it keeps happening to the same person maybe three or four times,
give them an option to go rehabilitation, and if that doesn't work, then maybe implement the conviction. But I myself have a Section 3 conviction, and it's with me probably 10 or 15 years now, and it stops you getting work. So it can stop someone from going down the right road by convicting them for personal use. You know, I don't agree with drugs, as I said.
So tell me about that, about your conviction, Ger.
So yeah, so I got caught with drugs and I got convicted. in the CCJ. What did you have? I had cocaine. So it was a section three. Again, I was in a nightclub, came out of the nightclub, got caught with drugs and, you know, I got the conviction, you know, and as I said, it's been with me now all the time now.
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Chapter 6: What is the impact of addiction on families as shared by listeners?
Like addiction is very complicated. It's very complicated because, like I said, is it learned behavior? Is it that you're born with it? It's a disease. We know that. It's a disease. But I mean, when you think of like drugs, and like I said, I worked in the mental health. The majority of people lived experience, as Ger said there. You don't know something unless you've lived it.
So when I worked with people in mental health, I lived the experience myself with anxiety, with everything. But I didn't turn to drugs. I turned to alternative. I went out, I did exercises, I breathed, I learned how to breathe. So like I said, am I an exception to the rule? I don't know. But there is other alternatives than taking a drug for your trauma.
087484888, as I said earlier, is the WhatsApp number. And you can send a message or a voice note of that as well as giving me a call. Christine is on the line as well. Christine, you're welcome to the show. Do you think that we should consider decriminalising possession for personal use?
Well, been honest. a small piece of hash is okay. But if these big drug dealers with crack, coke, and heroin, like, I know they can start off with a small piece of hash. I actually buried four boys, two overdoses. And they started with hash, then they went down to the coke, the crack, and the heroin. So I've been honest.
They're the hash, don't do nothing to nobody with these big, dirty, dirty drugs. You know, it's just like the government want to wake up, be honest, open the treatment centre, but they can walk in 10, not 8 weeks, not 4 weeks, 8 weeks or 12 weeks clean. And I would 100% recommend if they could do it in Cork, because as you have it in Dublin, it's an injection centre.
safe you know they're around when they're using their safe needles and if anything happened to them at least they're safe being looked after and christine was and listen i know this is worth nothing it kind of pales against what you went through but i'm so sorry to hear it but the um Was the pattern of addiction the same for all of your boys? That it started small and it spiralled?
Or, you know, was it different? Or what was your experience?
Well, they were raised in a very good home. I never blame ourselves. To be honest, it was probably started with hat, you know. But my two sons who overdosed and died, one boy died in the centre, a homeless shelter. And He died from crack cocaine. Leon died on the streets from heroin. So as I said, if there was somebody around him, they may have been saved. But they did die from overdose.
You know? They didn't get enough help, to be honest.
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Chapter 7: What arguments are made for and against decriminalising drug possession?
Yeah, and it's very difficult to follow people up because we have a very liberal society about wishes and preferences. So if people don't open the door to you, you literally have to wait until they're incredibly unwell. And our new Mental Health Act wants to respect people's wishes and preferences, whereas perhaps in the past we were more likely to hold on to people longer.
So we have a tough job, and I don't think it's about liberal and conservatives. we have to listen to the doctors, the police and to carers and family members. You know, we hear advocates all the time and those TVs who are recommending this, it'd be good to hear from them as well because I think it's been a bit one-sided at the moment.
Let me bring in Tony Gallagher who's a former Garda inspector. Tony,
Tony, I'm interested to get your view on this because the argument, the pushback from government, from some in government has been that, yes, while they agree with the Oireachtas Committee, a health-led approach is the way through this and the way to deal with this, they still think that the possibility of criminal conviction should be part of the arsenal. What's your view?
Yeah, let me start, Ciarán, by saying to you that there was a UN report in March 2023 from the Office on Drugs and Crime And that report indicated that Ireland were the fourth highest consumers of cocaine globally alongside the United States and Austria. And then data collected from 27 EU member states revealed that Ireland are twice the European average. So we have a problem and a big problem.
And, you know, we talk about kind of Middle Ireland, what the Tanisha said and whatever. And I think he's right in relation to what people are doing there. I mean, if you only profile the people that you're buying from, I mean, they're a lower-life kind of person. They'll be there for their means of selling to you only.
But I would suggest that those people in the Middle Ireland, they actually do have addictions. And what will creep up on them is that their health will deteriorate. their nasal cavities will cause infections and it'll be eaten away and eroded and at some point they'll end up in A&E departments and they will look for help. So do the Garda Síochána have a sympathetic approach?
I think they always had Ciarán because the Section 3s were a different category and only in the last two years the Section 3 possession of drugs for for simple possession is a scheduled offence that can be dealt with under the adult cautioning scheme. Now, that means that if it's merited, it's dealt with in that way and it doesn't form a criminal conviction. And I think that's a very good thing.
Now, naturally, if you go on to repeat, if you do it a second time or a third time, then you will come before the courts. But I think that that was a good step because there are many, many sad stories out there on your previous contributors there well illustrate that.
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Chapter 8: How does the conversation shift towards mental health and addiction treatment?
ends up with miserable addiction in families or for individuals.
No, that's a fair question. And I tell you why I wouldn't is because I still think they're different products. Yes, I think alcohol has a potential to cause great harm. But the fact is that from farm to fork, as it were, from production right through to consumption, it's regulated and legalised and controlled. And you're not putting money into the pockets of...
international criminal institutions, which is what you're doing when you buy cocaine and hash, that they are different things. And I understand it's kind of this, Harry, that the way you rationalise it is you just think of it as another product and it's no different to buying whiskey or something off the shelf in the local shop. But it is different.
Yeah, but I... Your cocaine comes soaked in blood. Okay, that's a... But it does. It absolutely does. And I'm not talking about people who die of addiction. I mean, I'm talking about, like, was it Tony who cited kind of a UN report? The UN was just about 65,000 people on the planet are killed in drug gang violence every year around the world.
Jesus, that's terrible. Listen, why can't we... legalize all drugs, make them safe, spell them on license, and develop taxation on these products. And that taxation could go into helping addictions, services. And through licensing these drugs, we could ensure that they're not dripped in blood. Okay. I mean, I don't think that's going to happen.
I don't think there's an appetite in our nation to legalise all drugs and kind of do it that way. I just don't think that's there.
Even if it doesn't happen, you'll still use occasionally?
I still smoke a bit, buy a bit of weed occasionally. It's a very rare occasion that I would use coke. I don't seek it out, but sometimes I'm in a company and it's there if you get my drift.
Yeah. Harry, I mean, for what it's worth, you're absolutely right. You're not the only one for whom it's there. It is ubiquitous around the country. Joan is on the line as well. Joan, what do you think of Harry's argument?
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