Irish Drugs Minister Aodhán O’Ríordáin is set to take part in a major international policy planning workshop on shifting drug strategies in Ireland and the UK. The London School Of Economics (LSE) will host O’Ríordáin at the November 2 event, with the Minister delivering a keynote speech that should reaffirm his commitment to a move away from the "war on drugs".
He spoke to Hot Press this summer about his desire to implement evidence-based, progressive drug policy in the country:
"Do you feel that a person's use of a substance should be a criminal offence that dogs them for the rest of their life? Instinctively no. I am an advocate for a discussion around the decriminalisation of drugs."
The workshop will bring together International Drug Policy experts from Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
This comes in the wake of leaked United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) document which suggests the agency will call for the decriminalisation of consumption on public health and human rights grounds.
These policy shifts are in line with the LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy report of May 2014, which was endorsed by five Nobel Prize winning economists.
In the second part of the event, eminent Professors John Strang, of King’s College London, and Professor Virginia Berridge, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will lead discussions on shifting the drug policy debate in the UK.
The event is by invitation only but will be recorded and made available online.