Countries should decriminalise drug possession and even petty supply and gradually move towards ‘regulating’ the illegal drug market, a major international report concludes.
It said countries are locking up huge numbers of people for drug crimes, including Ireland, where, it said, a fifth of inmates are in for drug offences.
The research, conducted by the Johns Hopkins-Lancet Commission on Drug Policy and Health, says there is “compelling evidence” from countries such as Portugal and the Czech Republic that decriminalisation has seen “significant” public health benefits.
The Oireachtas Justice Committee recommended last November the Portuguese model be examined here. The Hopkins-Lancet Commission report also strongly backs supervised injecting centres saying they reduced overdose deaths and the spread of infectious diseases.
Last December, the previous government gave the green light for a pilot medically-supervised injecting centre in Dublin.
Outgoing drugs minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin backed this proposal and also a Portuguese-type model.
The report of the Hopkins-Lancet Commission, composed of 22 experts, was published yesterday in the run-up to a special examination of drug laws by the UN this month.
“Decriminalisation of non-violent minor drug offences is a first and urgent step in a longer process of fundamentally rethinking drug policies,” said co-author Joanne Csete of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York. “As long as prohibition continues, parallel criminal markets, violence and repression will continue.”
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 01/04/16
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