Citizens' Assembly must seize opportunity to 'fix drugs crisis before it gets worse'
Dublin At Will 99 Drugs On Use, Which Submit Citizens Picture: And A Year The Independent Meeting Assembly, Citizens' Randomly Malahide, The Was Reid Oireachtas End In The Held Prising Inaugural Maxwell/pa Speaking Assembly Selected The The To Chairman, Paul Chairman The The Of Of By Report
It is like doing a master’s degree in six months — that’s how one top Irish drug expert recently described to the the task facing people on the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use.
The reading list alone would carpet Croke Park, and it’s getting longer all the time.
As we start our interview, the man tasked with directing the assembly, former HSE boss Paul Reid, is holding one of the more recent additions to that list.
It is a detailed report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) on approaches across Europe towards cannabis.
The 60-page 'Cannabis Laws in Europe' document is a very handy and readable primer on the changes that are going on across the continent, with five countries, Germany, Czechia, Luxembourg, Malta, and the Netherlands, taking moves towards regulation.
Given the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use is set to make recommendations across three areas — legislation, policy, and operational matters — the report will be placed top of the pile for members.
But it is just one report among many published in the last week or two.
Last week, EMCDDA published its annual report and, at the same time, the Health Research Board (HRB) published its country report to the Lisbon-based agency.
The HRB will on Monday publish more up-to-date information on drug treatment statistics and trends.
Last week, the Department of Justice published an independent evaluation of the youth diversion programme, which highlighted a range of issues on policy and operations relevant to the assembly’s work.
This 190-page report focused on the most vulnerable people in the drugs trade, children, and detailed the extent to which they are being sucked in at a very early age into gangland.
However, it also contained some hope that interventions such as the youth diversion programme are having success, although it cautioned more limited prospects when it comes to drugs and said an “urgent and comprehensive” response was needed.
More food for thought for the assembly.
Another study added to the list in the last fortnight is a shorter one on cocaine and crack cocaine by the Dublin South Inner City Drugs and Alcohol Task Force.
It paints a grim picture of a “critical level” of crack cocaine use and how it and associated problems of open drug dealing and drug-related intimidation were threatening the “fabric and heart” of local communities.
Also, in the same week, there was a special presentation and discussion on drug debt intimidation at the Dublin City Council Joint Policing Committee.
It heard reports of children as young as eight involved in collecting debts and the extent to which the drugs economy was “embedded” in some local communities.
The HRB also published a report on the link between disadvantaged areas and treated drug use.
In addition, there was a 180-page report on a long-awaited national dual diagnosis service for people with both a drug problem and a mental illness.
This is not to mention at least nine relevant domestic reports on operational, policy, and legal changes in the drugs area since 2015 that this newspaper has written about and over 15 excellent reports on the drugs trade and local communities since 2013.
Aside from all documents, the assembly has considerable terms of reference, including considering the causes, prevalence, and trends of drugs use; the harmful impact on people, families, and communities; best practice in rehabilitation and recovery; lived experience of young people and adults; international, national, and local perspectives on drugs, and assessing current strategic, policy, and operational responses.
However, Mr Reid says the assembly members are not running for the hills.
“I wouldn’t say they’re overwhelmed, to be frank,” said Mr Reid. “I think they’ve grasped the essence. Yes, it’s broad and big. So, we have taken an approach with the assembly members to give them a little bit of breadth and depth across the issues, but, you know, we can’t get lost on any one particular aspect.
“I’d say after two assembly meetings and heading into the third we’re definitely where we would have wanted to be in terms of their level of understanding of the key issues.”
The inaugural session on drug policy and use was followed by a busy, and very moving, second session on the impact on individuals, families, communities, and frontline workers.
The third session, being held this weekend, is set to be very interesting, but demanding, and will look at the health models in Portugal and Austria and, in Ireland, the statutory and voluntary drug services, harm reduction projects, treatment and recovery programmes, and services for families.
Mr Reid said the Portuguese model, which two Oireachtas justice committees have recommended in recent years, was chosen because it was the one most referenced and he wanted the assembly “to get under the bonnet” of it.
Austria, he said, operated a depenalisation model, where someone caught in possession of drugs for personal use can theoretically receive a conviction but are typically referred to the health authorities, allowing police to concentrate on more serious offences.
The fourth session in September will focus specifically on the big legal topics — decriminalisation, criminalisation, and regulation — and wider criminal justice programmes and policies.
Mr Reid said that as part of this, it would look at the experiences of communities living with the drugs trade and interventions in the area, an issue that local community groups and councillors, and researchers, will expect serious focus on given the scale of the impact on marginalised communities.
The fifth session will cover prevention and education and other issues.
Organising the whole process is the secretariat, a team of 10 civil servants, assisted by three assembly groups: an advisory support group, a lived experience group, and a steering group.
Mr Reid said they have a legal expert working on the fourth session.
He said he regularly comes into the assembly’s office, near Mountjoy Sq in Dublin, and meets the secretariat, with fortnightly meetings of the three groups.
He said assembly members do not get a report on the public weekend meetings, but said the “themes” from the assembly tables are noted and answers supplied, if not from the meetings themselves, following contact with relevant departments or agencies.
He said there is a members’ forum online and that relevant reports, such as the EU cannabis law study, are circulated there for members.
Mr Reid said a lot of the members are doing an “incredible amount” of reading themselves and becoming well informed and he said questions asked by the members throughout the first two meetings demonstrated this.
He said he is also happy that members are not just interested in the big ticket issues, over the laws, but are equally interested in the human stories, the drug services, the drug harms, and the impact on communities.
“They got a real sense of how people in those communities can suffer trauma and then suffer addiction and suffer criminalisation, the vicious cycle that happens in communities. They just got a glimpse so far at administrative processes and legal processes. You can hear a lot of them talking about services as well.”
He added: “My fear would have been they might just hone in on the public aspect of the debate and their minds might get fixed on legalisation, decriminalisation, but they haven’t. They are looking at this in its breadth and entirety.”
Mr Reid said they gave guidance to the members at the start regarding handling the media debate and any “lobbying by advocates” they might receive.
He feels the criticism from some pro-regulation groups that the assembly was “stitched up” with establishment voices and included people against decriminalisation has “relatively dissipated”, partly because of the content and tone of the first two meetings.
Against the background of some concerns, much of it expressed on social media, that the voices and views of the bulk of drug users, those who are occasional or recreational users, were not being aired, given that the bulk of sessions dealt with addiction and services for problem drug users, Mr Reid confirmed they are examining this issue.
“We are considering further presentations or voices from those kind of advocates during our next couple of sessions.
“Certainly, in terms of submissions, we would have got a significant number already, understandably, from those voices. They are a very legitimate part of this debate and will need to be included. They have been included and probably will be included more in later sessions.”
Asked how the secretariat or the advisory group and, in particular, the members keep track of all the research and reports coming out from North America on the medical and policy benefits and costs of legalisation in the US and Canada, Mr Reid said they do circulate research papers to the assembly.
“When we start to get towards the end of this process, it will be impossible for the assembly members to design all of the solutions around whatever recommendations they make,” the former HSE boss said.
“They have not had the capacity or capability and time to design that, that could be a legal issue, but I do believe we can get to a point of saying, ‘this thing is broke, it needs to be fixed and here’s what we think needs to be fixed’. There’s probably a bit of design that’s in the hands of the legislators anyway.”
Asked whether members will have to weigh up the human argument in favour of decriminalisation and balance that against the legal argument that it may breach international law or the policy argument that it leaves supply in the hands of criminal gangs, and decide which wins out, he said: “All those inputs will be put forward to the assembly members. They will hear in September some of the legal issues.
“They’ve heard from the gardaí and the Department of Justice and will hear more again from a services perspective and they will have to grapple with that in terms of potentially some unintended consequences — you change something here, what might the implications be over there?
“But at the end of the day, you know, from wherever you are, in this process, if we keep doing everything the same, this thing is really, really bad, and really hurting communities and individuals, it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse.
"That's a really big question. I have a view but I'm trying to bring the debate forward.”
He said members will be informed on the distinctions between depenalisation, decriminalisation, and legalisation, and the consequences, legal and practical, of opting for any one of them.
“I have said to them [the members] at the start, we should be brave in our recommendations, not uninformed, but we should be brave in our recommendations, because this needs something different.”
Mr Reid is conscious of recent and ongoing changes to Irish drug laws, including 2017 legislation enabling the establishment of a supervised injecting centre, where possession of drugs inside the centre is not an offence.
That centre cleared a final planning hurdle last January and is expected to be operational next year, but specific guidelines on how gardaí will police the drug possession laws outside the centre is not yet clear.
There has also been changes to the adult caution scheme, implemented in December 2020, to include possession of cannabis for personal use, on first occasion.
The Government agreed in August 2019 to implement a health diversion programme for possession for personal use of any illegal drug following the recommendation of the Working Group to Consider Alternative Approaches to the Possession of Drugs for Personal Use, allowing for at most two referrals to the HSE instead of prosecution.
The HSE is awaiting necessary legislation to operate the scheme.
The Department of Justice told the Citizens' Assembly in April that this programme, and a similar initiative for people with mental health disorders caught by gardaí with drugs, as recommended by the High Level Task Force on Mental Health and Addiction, will be legislated for in forthcoming laws.
Last year, the HSE, following the agreement of An Garda Síochána and the departments of health and justice, established its first drug-checking service at a music festival.
The limited ‘back of house’ initiative has been expanded to three festivals this year and HSE bosses would like to provide a more extensive ‘front of house’ service, which would require legal changes.
A lot for assembly members to take into account.
The assembly meets formally six times, over weekends, with the first meeting in April and the last one in October, with the report sent to the Oireachtas by year’s end.
Pressed again whether he and members have enough time, and whether he should push for an extension, Mr Reid said: “Look, it’s extremely challenging, extremely challenging.
“It’s very demanding on myself and the secretariat, more than I might have thought, to be frank, and I’ve no doubt on the assembly members. So it is demanding, extremely demanding on time.”
However, he said he and the secretariat designed the programme of work “to achieve what’s been set out” in the terms of reference on time.
“To be frank, I think assemblies, by their very nature, are better to have a start and an end date, no matter how complex it is.
In terms of the process that results in what recommendations to make, Mr Reid said that John Garry, professor of political behaviour at Queen’s University Belfast, will play a key role.
He has “expertise on the deliberative democracy process” and has served in previous citizens’ assemblies.
“So, with the big themes, we will need to start thinking what questions we ask of the assembly members and probe further and deeper into those themes, have that further debate, which then may move to what might a ballot paper look like and the response to the ballot paper comes into the recommendations.”
He said they have not yet designed the format of the questions.
Asked about whether members need to explore the consequences of making certain recommendations, he said: “The role of the deliberative democracy people will help us do that, because it can’t just be, you know, do you think we should recommend decriminalisation? There’s a couple of steps before you get there. The assembly members won’t be the absolute experts in the design of the legal solution.”
Asked whether the recommendations will be coherent, in that, if they vote for decriminalisation, have the members also determined that this is possible in law, both Irish and international?
“We have to look at the linked consequences and unintended consequences,” said Mr Reid. “It can’t be just an uninformed kind of recommendation.
"The assembly have heard some of the views from the gardaí — they are not in favour of legalisation with the consequences of becoming a tourist destination for drugs — so the members have heard that, but I think that they’ll be well enough informed to know you can’t make a simple recommendation.”
He is firmly of the view the recommendations cannot be vague and general.
“We want to be more specific, that’s what I’m saying about being brave, but also thinking it through.”
He said the recommendations are made first and then the report is written.
“We won’t be writing the report and saying to members, ‘what do you think of that?’ The report will come after the recommendation and context will be important in the report.”
Mr Reid cites lessons from the assembly process leading up to the abortion referendum.
“They were radical and brave and that was quite a complicated issue. So, I certainly would be having these assembly members in that mindset — to call out some of the issues and make recommendations, but be informed in our recommendations.”
He sees his experience in the HSE as informing this process.
“My role as chair, near the end of this process, is to help assembly members understand how you might get traction at departmental level, administrative level, at Government level, and how you might not — that’s a legitimate role of the chairperson. So, if you make 250 recommendations you will get lost in them, but if you have less, you are beginning to land some things.”
On the implementation of their recommendations, he said: “It depends on where it fits in the land of political priorities, ministers’ priorities, what traction it gets. What I say to assembly members is we don’t have power, but we have a very good opportunity to influence.”