A glance through the crime pages of the national dailies can be deeply dispiriting. It is an arena in which the sheer grubbiness of so much of what goes on in society becomes horribly palpable. Murders, armed robberies, stabbings, rape, abuse of children – there is generally little or nothing that can be said in favour of those who are guilty of crimes involving violence.

Now and then something even grimmer in its way, or more poignant, emerges, where the accused has a history of psychiatric disturbance and you can imagine the terrible murk through which the individual and his or her family have struggled in the past to end up here, at the butt end of the criminal justice system, hoping for some kind of understanding and mercy to prevail.
The catalogue of misery doesn’t end there. Over the past year or two, there has been an apparently endless stream of court cases involving banks foreclosing on people who cannot repay monstrous levels of personal debt. The reports give an insight into just how horribly wrong things have gone since the property bubble burst, for what are generally ordinary, decent people trying to do their best but who have made decisions that will likely haunt them for the rest of their lives.
And then there are the less complicated cases – generally non-violent petty crimes that barely merit the time it takes to prosecute them – where the accused really does become a source of sympathy. There is a story of social deprivation and disadvantage behind virtually every one of these. The worst of it is when you see disproportionately draconian sentences being handed down by an irascible and often boorish judge for the likes of petty theft or dealing marijuana.
You cringe inside, knowing that it is a mistake, a useless and damaging piece of probably unconscious vindictiveness that compounds the felony, rather than offering a basis for learning, starting again and developing a different way of living …
Which is why it is so uplifting to see a court making a good decision in relation to a non-violent crime that might well have gone the other way. As it happens, the accused was a schoolboy – he’s 16 years of age now – who at the age of 14 was caught in his home in West Dublin, with €40,000 worth of cannabis in his school satchel. The amount was sufficient to merit a long custodial sentence. In the event, however, following a guilty plea and positive reports from the social services and probation officers involved, Judge Anne Ryan decided differently, sentencing the kid to nine months supervised probation. It was a victory for common sense, holding out the hope that the young man might now be allowed to mature into a fully functioning citizen, capable of giving something back to society, rather than going into prison, there to be further inculcated into the criminal ethos and way of life.
Of course, the case also begs a different question entirely. If cannabis weren’t illegal, then the boy wouldn’t have been put in that position in the first place. It got me thinking for the zillionth time: when are the authorities across Europe going to waken up to the fact that the ban on cannabis is totally counter-productive? That in criminalising its purchase and distribution, you are merely playing into the hands of organized criminal gangs, enabling them to control the sale and supply of a product that is heavily in demand?
In the US, the laws on marijuana have been loosened in a number of States. In Europe there are different regimes in effect in different countries, with Holland and the Czech Republic among those with more liberal regimes. In Uruguay, the government have announced plans to legalize the sale of marijuana under State control, a decision that was hailed as courageous by the 2010 Nobel prize winner, writer, politician, intellectual and activist, Mario Vargas Llosa.
Is there any reason why we here in Ireland should not take a similarly radical position? The answer is a resounding ‘no’. The truth is that it might just be hugely advantageous to Ireland economically right now to legislate so that people could enjoy a cannabis tipple of whatever kind, without fear of being hauled before the courts. That, however, would require a level of courage for which politicians in Ireland – who prefer to follow the crowd – have never been noted.
But perhaps the public mood is beginning to shift. The Government can at least test the waters in this respect by immediately introducing legislation that would make medically prescribed cannabis legal here, for people with Multiple Sclerosis and other illnesses for which it is prescribed.
Inevitably, the corporatist approach has been to drag cannabis into the hungry ambit of the pharmaceutical industry. Sativex, an extract of cannabis, which is taken as a spray under the tongue has been approved as medicine in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and the Czech Republic. Irish campaigners are now pressing for the legalisation of the drug here, for use under medical supervision. Objectively, there is no excuse whatsoever for any obfuscation in relation to this. The palliative effects of the drug have been well established. Those with medical conditions that would benefit from its use are crying out for it. They are, in any case, generally on a cocktail of less effective drugs. To deny them a better medical option because of some residual hang-up about the wider reputation of cannabis is clearly irresponsible and wrong. At the very least, the Government should act quickly now to enable doctors to prescribe it – and patients to use it.
The extent of public support for this move might just surprise the Government. It should also give them pause for further thought. You can, of course, make an argument that an entirely drug-free society would be a better place for us all to live. But that is unproven and probably unprovable. And I am not at all sure that it is right either. The psychology of drug use is complicated. Stimulants used in moderation are not necessarily a bad thing. And given how strong is the urge to experiment with mind-altering substances of one kind or another – and I am including alcohol in that category – it seems daft to attempt to criminalise one of the commonest and the safest of the drugs currently in widespread use.
Right now I get my highs from playing football on a Saturday afternoon at what is still a reasonably serious level. In a sense, fitness is the drug and anything that might mess with that isn’t much of interest to me. But that it might not fit my agenda doesn’t change the basic argument. People have used cannabis for centuries without any evidence of damaging side-effects on a scale to match those of cigarettes or alcohol, both of which are legal. A significant percentage of the population has tried it. Most people use it for a while and then move on. But it is not sufficiently harmful to warrant prison sentences and all of the extravagant cost and damage to lives that is associated with criminalisation.
Ireland might usefully begin a process of reform by following the lead of Alaska, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and making marijuana legal to have up to an ounce for personal use. But it would be better still to follow through on the logic of that dispensation and to allow people to grow marijuana for personal use and to create a framework, as they plan to do in Uruguay, for the controlled sale of the drug.
The benefits of taking that trade out of the hands of the criminals would far outweigh any potential negative effects. But more importantly, it would be a logical reflection in legislation of what the majority of people know in their hearts, from their own experience: cannabis is not really a seriously dangerous drug at all.
Is that kind of simple sanity too much to look for from our legislators? It certainly shouldn’t be…