IN A LANDMARK report last week, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Drugs Use proposed repealing section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. This would mean that people can no longer be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced by the criminal courts solely for possessing drugs for personal use.

As the Committee’s chair, Gary Gannon TD, outlined in his foreword, this would not be a marginal adjustment to drug policy. The idea that it helps to punish, or threaten to punish, people for using drugs is embedded in our psyche. Many people have genuine concerns about changing the law.

Decades of research shows that criminalising people causes additional harm, without improving health or decreasing problem drug use. But before outlining what research indicates are the likely effects of repealing section 3, it is important to clarify exactly what that would involve.

Decriminalising people, not substances

Disappointingly, governmental responses to the report have been littered with inaccuracies.

Firstly, commentators often conflated decriminalising people who use drugs with permitting drug dealing. If the Joint Committee’s recommendations were adopted, selling, supplying, cultivating, manufacturing and importing drugs would remain crimes.

Contrary to what the Minister of State for the National Drugs Strategy, Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, said, it is not ‘legalisation’ when supplying drugs remains illegal.

Nor, as the Tánaiste suggested, does decriminalisation imply approval. Just because a behaviour is not a crime does not mean the State supports it. Attempting to die by suicide was a crime until the early 90s.

Legal scholars argue that decriminalisation was not endorsement, but acceptance that it is wrong for the State to punish a person in that position. We don’t criminalise smoking, but our laws and policies successfully discourage it. Decriminalisation does not stop anyone arguing that using........

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