A conference calling for a debate on drug laws yesterday heard that a man faced a three-month prison term for having cannabis worth just €2.
Homelessness campaigner Fr Peter McVerry said the judge only let the youth off with a suspended sentence because the priest was with him in court and offered to help him.
“It is such a waste of resources,” Fr McVerry told a conference organised by Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign, a national network of community organisations.
“What we are doing just isn’t working. We need to ask what are the alternatives to deal with the drugs menace?”
Citywide was launching a leaflet calling for a debate on drug laws and arguing the case for the decriminalisation of the possession of drugs.
Chairwoman Anna Quigley said that this issue would have been a divisive one for local communities, but that, within the past five years or so, people were seeing the damage criminalisation had on individual drug users and their families.
“It makes no sense whatsoever to work with drug users, to help them, but at the same time leave them with a criminal conviction for the rest of their lives,” said Ms Quigley. “There’s no logic in that.”
The leaflet said there was “no evidence that decriminalisation increases drug use” and cited the experience in Portugal, where the number of problem drug users has actually fallen.
Ms Quigley said between 25 and 30 countries had implemented some form of decriminalisation, but that legalisation was a more “complex” issue.
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 21/11/13
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