Ireland needs to stop stigmatising and villainising drug users, assembly hears
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Not all drug use is problematic and some can even be beneficial, the first Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use has heard.
Professor Jo-Hanna Ivers, Associate Professor of Addiction at Trinity College Dublin told the Citizens’ Assembly that members of her immediate and extended family had died in addiction.
Born in Dublin’s north inner city, she said that drug use and addiction were highly prevalent there.
“I didn’t just lose family members but I lost community members, school friends, friends, but I also gained this insight into addiction that is quite unique.
"That’s what drives me in my daily work and makes me passionate about addiction.”
People use drugs for one of two reasons, Dr Ivers said, to stop feeling something or to start feeling something - to start feeling relaxed or to stop feeling pain.
The Canadian model of looking at drug use on a spectrum was useful she said, as it examined drug use from nonproblematic use through to addiction.
Not all drug use is problematic, she said, with evidence that some drug users experience little negative impact and even some benefits.
Up to 90% of drug users perceive their drug use as beneficial or non-problematic – including both prescription and illegal drugs, with such benefits including helping people to relax, Dr Ivers said.
Some 100 members of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, which gathered for the first time in Malahide on Saturday, were told that drugs impacted individuals and families every day and their work on the Assembly had the opportunity to positively impact countless lives across the country through their recommendations.
They will issue a report with recommendations on Ireland’s drug policy later this year which will then go to the Oireachtas for consideration.
The need to stop stigmatising and villainising drug users was raised as a concern by multiple speakers.
Dr Sharon Lambert from the School of Applied Psychology in University College Cork said that stigma and shame blocks people with a substance dependence from accessing help.
She compared the current stigma around drug use to attitudes around mental health in the 1980s and 1990s in Ireland.
And drug policies that tell you that you are a criminal feed into that stigma, she said.
It can be too difficult for many people to seek help unless we create a compassionate system to support them, she said.
Studies show that some 80%-90% of people who are drug dependent have experienced trauma, Dr Lambert said.
And if someone who had suffered major psychological trauma could not access services but found a substance that made them feel they could cope with their own emotional pain, how can society then harm them further by giving them a criminal conviction, she asked.
Philly McMahon, former GAA player whose brother John suffered a heroin addiction and died, said that a medical model would better help people struggling with mental health problems that they then self-medicated with drugs and ultimately get caught in the criminal justice system for what was originally a medical issue.
One man who was plagued by memories of sexual abuse took sleeping pills to try to escape images in his mind of that trauma and subsequently got reprimanded in prison for taking medication without a prescription when what he really needed was psychological and medical help, Mr McMahon said.
Adopting a medical model around drug use, treating it as a medical issue rather than a criminal justice one, could help people break free from their addiction and free up resources currently tied up in expensive prison sentences and court dates.
However, psychiatrist Dr Mary Cannon warned that if society decides to further normalise drug use then young people will take drugs.
Paul Reid, who chaired the meeting, warned that drug use is not just a conceptual issue but a real issue that affects people today.
The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use was established following a resolution of Dáil Éireann in February this year.
Members have been randomly selected to participate following the issuing of 20,000 invitations to households around the country.
The Citizens’ Assembly has been asked to consider the legislative, policy, and operational changes the State could make to significantly reduce the harmful impacts of illicit drugs on individuals, families, communities and wider society and to report to the Houses of the Oireachtas this year.