Why are we still obsessed with putting people in jail for cultivating or using marijuana? The same question arises every time I hear one of those ridiculous, breathless reports from crime correspondents about the latest bust.

There is something utterly absurd about the whole farrago. Only a fool would try to claim, without qualification, that cannabis is ‘good’ for you. But, equally, no-one in their right mind would argue that it represents a significant danger to anyone’s life or health. And yet a vast amount of money is spent every year, in a cash-strapped economy, on the futile attempt to prevent people using it for recreational purposes. It is an entirely ridiculous exercise in national self-delusion.
I have said it before in the pages of Hot Press: I have no particular interest in stimulants. I currently get my highs on a football field, where sharpness is everything and messing with that is not on the agenda. But it is patently obvious that we could save ourselves millions if we started acting like adults about the drugs issue.
If there is a bust of any scale, it is trotted out as a major story on the main evening news on RTÉ, as if it matters a damn – when clearly it doesn’t make a shred of difference to the pattern of consumption on the ground. The supply of marijuana has been more or less consistent in this country for almost 50 years. It has been used, and it will be used, by otherwise law-abiding people, and young people in particular, for the very simple reason that they have no respect for the law prohibiting its use. They don’t believe the nonsense that is spouted by officialdom about it being a gateway drug because it patently is not.
They know that hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens have smoked marijuana or made cakes with it. And they see these same people, unharmed, ascending to positions of responsibility and authority in the community.
They see them teaching, becoming doctors, lawyers, scientists and writers. They observe them being elected to the Dáil. There are Gardaí who happily travel to Amsterdam for a weekend’s trawl through café culture – and then have to enforce prohibitionist laws back at home.
And yet, here’s the rub: while hundreds of thousands of Irish people have at one time or another fired up a joint for their own personal pleasure, or shared in one that was passed around, to be caught in possession of cannabis is a very serious matter. Having a criminal record is a millstone. Being refused a visa to travel to the US is a nightmare if you are a musician. And whether you are caught and prosecuted or not, in so many ways, is down to the luck of the draw.
A significant number of the inmates of Irish prisons are there because of drug-related offences. You might think that heroin would be the main issue here, given that there is an addict population of over 15,000 in the Republic. In fact, most drug sentences relate to cannabis.
Why is such a lucrative trade handed over to the criminal underworld to profit from? And why are the lives of thousands of Irish citizens being blighted needlessly for doing something that harms no one, except perhaps in the most minor way, themselves?
There is a growing international consensus that the so-called war on drugs has faled. The Organisation of American States has just published a review which challenges the status quo by spelling out the ways in which drug laws in Europe and the United States create vast and unnecessary suffering in those countries where marijuana and the coca plant are essential crops.
The OAS is putting Europe and the United States on notice that they will no longer enforce the prohibitionist policies that have fomented a gangland culture, which has wreaked havoc and resulted in thousands of murders in Central and South American countries. They believe that the human cost of the war on drugs is too high. And they are right.
Dozens of leading international writers, thinkers and politicians are now coming together to advocate change in the drugs regime across the world. This view is being advanced by South and Central American leaders like President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala, ex-President of Colombia César Gaviri and ex-President of Brazil Fernando H. Cardoso, among many more.
And it is supported, under the Breaking The Taboo umbrella, by heavyweights as politically diverse as former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, former Polish President and Nobel prize winner Lech Walesa, Professor Noam Chomsky, former US Secretary of State, George P. Schultz, businessman Richard Branson, novelists Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes, musicians Yoko Ono and Sting, former head of the UK Crown Prosecution Service, Lord McDonald QC and a long list of Nobel prize winners and Professors in science, medicine and economics.
“Use of the major controlled drugs has risen,” their mission statement says, “and supply is cheaper and more available than ever before. The UN conservatively estimates that there are now over 250 million drug users worldwide.
“Illicit drugs are now the third most valuable industry in the world, after food and oil, all in the control of criminals. Fighting the war on drugs costs the world’s taxpayers incalculable billions each year. Millions of people are in prison worldwide for drug-related offences, mostly personal users and small-time dealers…
“The drug-free world so confidently predicted by supporters of the war on drugs is further than ever from attainment. The policies of prohibition create more harms than they prevent. We must seriously consider shifting resources away from criminalising tens of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and move towards an approach based on health, harm-reduction, cost-effectiveness and respect for human rights.”
This is what we have been saying in Hot Press for a long time – and the world is finally catching up.
Why shouldn’t Ireland lead the way on this issue in Europe? The benefits would flow immediately if we could get over the shibboleths, cut out the cost of prohibitionism, reshape the regime to regulate and tax the use of marijuana (to begin with) and trust Irish citizens to make up their own minds whether they want to use recreational drugs or not.
Tolerance is not a hard concept to grasp. If people want to smoke a joint, let them. In a republic you respect people of all religions and none. And you also respect human rights and allow that – as long as we don’t knowingly harm others – we are entitled to shape our own lives, make our own informed decisions and act according to our own best conscience.
Abandoning the failed policy of prohibitionism would be a very good place to begin the process of ushering in a new, more essentially human, positive, enlightened and generous regime. Let’s do it...