The Chair of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use has said a "health-based approach" is the only way to tackle drug addiction in the country.
Gary Gannon, Social Democrats' Dublin Central TD, spoke to Newstalk's Anton Savage where he discussed the impending Oireachtas report into Assembly's 2024 recommendations which may impact Government policy surrounding the issue.
Gannon recommends a holistic method of treatment which addresses the root causes of addiction.
"We have had moralising on an issue of drugs since the 70s, we have Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just say no’, we've had all of that, it's not working,” he said.
“What I want to understand is why that is happening.
“If it's in every rugby club, football club, GAA club, whatever; if it's in most night clubs and pubs, you're talking to people who probably work nine-to-five jobs, probably hold themselves in high regard.
“They're fit, active, and they're still going into a toilet to consume something into their body.”
He also says the criminalisation of drugs use needs to end in order for effective rehabilitation of drug-addicted individuals to take place.
“Let's do the Einstein quote; ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome’ - we have not tried a health-based approach,” he said.
“We know the criminal sanction approach just fuels an industry that's unregulated.
“We don't have a prison probably in Europe and America that's free of drugs, why do we think we'll have a society?
“So, we need a different approach, a health-based approach that's based in evidence, compassion, care - maybe that'll give us a better outcome than what we presently have.”
A United Nations report in 2023 found Irish people were the joint-fourth highest consumers of cocaine globally.
Gannon, now 38, admitted yesterday in an interview with the Sunday Independent that he experimented with drugs in his younger years.
“I did take drugs when I was younger, particularly after I stopped playing football in between, kind of, early 20s, when I was in college, working in a bookies. Drugs were everywhere and I remember being at those parties.”
He said he took drugs because it was “the norm”, but said he didn’t take a “huge amount”.
He added that drugs in clubs and at house parties are routinely “passed around”.
Responding to a question about specifically which drugs he used to take, Gannon said: “There were different forms of drugs. There would have been tablets, there was coke which I absolutely hated the idea of because it smelled like gasoline. You took that then, you could see the high of it.”
“I never got involved in heroin, never got involved in crack cocaine, never got involved in the sleeping tablets, the benzodiazepines,” he added.
“I can see the appeal of them because what people don’t say enough is [that] drugs can be fun and are fun in the moment and that’s why so many people take them. But you’re also taking them because there’s a lot of other shit going on outside of that moment that you’re probably looking to remove yourself from. Then you have the comedowns, and the headaches and the depression.”
Gannon also urged the Government to “get on with” long-promised drug reforms.
“Let’s get the evidence, let’s get the report and actually get on with making proactive health-based changes to the law, because the system as a stance hasn’t worked for anybody.”
The Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use convened six times in 2023 to consider the legislative, policy and operational changes Ireland could make to significantly reduce the harmful impacts of illicit drugs on individuals, families, communities and wider Irish society.
The Assembly was made up of 100 people, including 99 members of the general public and the independent Chairperson.
The 99 members of the general public were selected at random in accordance with most recent census data.
