Oireachtas committee on justice may recommend that Ireland follow the example of Portugal which 14 years ago decriminalised all drugs.
Watching Bob Dylan at Slane, I found clinching evidence of the factual basis of the first line in Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, How To Talk Dirty And Influence People: “You wouldn’t believe how many people smoke marijuana.”
In fact, not only would I have believed it, I already knew it. But it was good to have it confirmed when one of the most celebrated Irish entrepreneurs of the age nudged my elbow and asked whether I fancied a toke on his joint. Naturally, I refused, not wanting to seem to be too hugger-mugger with a famous entrepreneur.
A couple of decades on, the legalisation of marijuana has become a relatively respectable cause. Take actuaries – hardly among the cooler professions. Earlier this year, Contingencies, the journal of the American Academy of Actuaries, advised members to reconsider the weight they were giving to marijuana when calculating what premiums to apply to discrete categories of customers. Actuaries should disabuse themselves of the notion that marijuana “conferred the same relative mortality risk as cigarette smoking”.
Source: Eamonn McCann, Irish Times, 29/10/15
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