Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:


After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.

OPED: Focus in fight on drugs gone to pot

Vincent Browne

Irish Times

Wednesday 10 Dec 1997

A few weeks ago I talked to several drug addicts in Dublin and
to people involved in the treatment of drug addicts. All of them
concurred that there was more heroin available on the streets
of Dublin now then there has ever been. They acknowledged
that there had been a drought over a few weeks last March but
that now Dublin was awash with heroin. The drought had been
caused, apparently, by the capture of a large consignment of
heroin but, happily (as one of the addicts said), there had been
no further major seizures, certainly none of such significance as
to interrupt the supply even for a day.

One might wonder how this could be so, given the high-profile
success of the Garda and the Criminal Assets Bureau in
targeting the drug barons and putting so many of them in jail in
the last year. The answer is, regrettably, that the success is
largely illusory. And for a few reasons.

The first is that for so long as there is a frenetic demand for
hard drugs, there will be supply. There is simply too much
money to be made from the trade and such a relatively small
chance of being caught. The prize is well worth the risk.

There is such relatively little chance of being caught in drug
criminality for the simple reason that those who are harmed by
the crime are themselves implicated in it. This is quite unlike any
other crime, where the person harmed has a real motive to
seek retribution, for instance, someone who has been robbed
or assaulted.

Anyway, what this means is that even if all the main drug
barons were put away, new ones would quickly take their
place because of the net incentive: the money minus the risk of
being caught.

The second reason for the illusion of success against the drug
trade is that the Garda has targeted, in the main, not the hard
drugs business but the soft drugs business. And to illustrate this
point I am obliged to resort to the annual report of the Garda
Siochana for 1996. This acknowledges (page 62): "Cannabis
resin was involved in approximately half of controlled drug
offences" (in 1996). Ecstasy accounted for a further 12 per
cent and heroin for only 15 per cent.

The report continues: "Cannabis was involved in 62 per cent of
the cases where controlled drugs were seized and analysed
during 1996" (page 63).

The report shows that there were 3,412 cases of cannabis and
cannabis resin seizures in 1996, involving a total of 1,935 kg.
This compares with just 664 cases of seizures of heroin
(one-fifth of the cannabis seizures).

Several of the highest-profile arrests of so-called drug barons,
such as Patrick Holland, concern people allegedly involved, not
in hard drugs but in cannabis.

In May the Ministerial Task Force on drugs, chaired by Pat
Rabbitte, produced its second report. This dealt, in part, with
the use of soft drugs. In a section dealing with the effects of
cannabis (page 39) it stated that "cannabis is not usually
considered to produce physical dependence" but went on:
"Psychological dependence has been noted in some users."

It noted "cannabis increases the workload of the heart" and
people who have some forms of mental illness may suffer a
relapse if they take cannabis.

That was all they could come up with. Some people have a
psychological dependence on cannabis (like some people have
a psychological dependence on Coronation Street) and in the
cases of some people it is bad for their heart and nerves (like
the Progressive Democrats are bad for the heart and nerves of
some people?).

The task force was similarly unimpressive on the harmful effects
of ecstasy use.

That second report avoided a piece of silliness in the first,
published in October 1996. This described cannabis as a
gateway to hard drugs. They thought better, apparently, of this
line of argument by the time they got to their second report
seven months later. And they were right.

The first report on the use of hard drugs showed clearly and
graphically that hard drug use is concentrated almost
exclusively in the deprived urban areas of our cities, notably
Dublin. The gateway to hard drugs is clearly deprivation, and
any suggested link with soft drugs is, at least in our
circumstances, nonsense.

The case for the decriminalisation of the sale, supply and
possession of these drugs is overwhelming, but that is not the
point here. The point here is that massive Garda effort and
resources have gone into the detection and prevention of the
crimes associated with cannabis and that this is a thorough
waste of time. If all that Patrick Holland et al did was to supply
and sell cannabis and ecstasy, they would be hardly deserving
of the slightest censure, let alone prosecution and
imprisonment.

In the absence of the decriminalisation of the supply and sale of
cannabis and ecstasy, the Garda should treat lightly crimes
associated with these, as they do such infractions as being in
public houses after closing time, driving without wearing seat
belts and brothel-keeping. We need wide tolerance, not zero
tolerance.

There would be a positive benefit to this, apart from that of
saving Garda time and resources as well as the resources of the
prosecution service and courts. This would be to remove the
trade in soft drugs from the hardened criminal fraternity,
undermining their profits and their livelihoods.

The recently published report of the Steering Group on the
Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Garda Siochana (which,
incidentally shows that Ireland has by far the lowest incidence
of crime per 1,000 population of countries selected for
comparison) avoids this issue entirely.

But surely, central to the role of the Garda should be an
identification of the social harms that are appropriate for a
police force to monitor and prevent and their withdrawal from
those areas of activity that relate to behaviour that causes no
social harm or minimal social harm or where policing is
inappropriate?

A great deal of social harm is caused by those who
misappropriate public resources (e.g. unpaid taxes) or abuse
the environment, and yet the focus of the Garda is hardly
directed at all at these. Surely policing in such areas is entirely
appropriate? It is significant, for instance, that the crime of
tax-evasion is not even listed among the catalogue of crimes in
the annual Garda reports.

In the meantime, the Garda would do well to forget about
cannabis, unless of course their Minister drives them to pot.

 

 

 

After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back. 




This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.

Feel free to link to this page!