Two GPs who treat young people for drug addiction believe cannabis use should be decriminalised for both recreational and medicinal use and regulated rather than outlawed.Cathal Ó Súilliobháin, a Dublin-based GP who has worked in addiction services for 20 years, said the “major negative” of using cannabis “is getting caught”.
“The majority of people who use cannabis have no [health] problem,” he said. “Nobody has ever died from cannabis use,” he said, adding that it was “much less harmful” than alcohol.
Dr Ó Súilliobháin said he had “kids coming to me, usually with parents, and the problem is not the drug itself, but a problem with the family, with school, with the law”.
Dr Ó Súilliobháin said young people were getting convictions for using cannabis that were ruining their lives.
Garrett McGovern, a GP in addiction services in Dundrum, said that if cannabis was regulated rather than decriminalised, it would facilitate research on its effects.
“If you regulate a drug, you can study it with a greater degree of accuracy,” Dr McGovern said.
Both doctors were proposing a motion at the Irish Medical Organisation’s AGM in Co Kildare, calling on James Reilly, the health minister, to establish an expert committee to examine the effects, “both positive and negative” of cannabis use and production in Ireland “in order to help eliminate the illicit trade in psychoactive substances”.
Dr Ó Súilliobháin said there was no point in proposing a motion calling for the decriminalising of cannabis use, because a trade union of doctors would never support it.
Source: Irish Examiner, 28/04/14
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