Context: There have been calls from within the community to respond to recent developments in relation to the recent 2026 Oireachtas joint committee on drug use report and the more recent National Drugs Strategy.
There is broad agreement in our communities with many of the goals, and most if not all of the recommendations of the 2022 Justice committee, the 2023 Citizens’ Assembly, the 2024 interim report from the joint committee on drug use and the 2026 cross party report from the current Oireachtas term. The community has also been vocal about the Fianna Fáil 2024 Election Manifesto and its stance in this area.
With that in mind, the recent strategy appears to be a more centralised, top down, bureaucratic version of the 2017 National Drugs Strategy, not the step change with a mandate since the majority opinion in the 2019 working group.
We are publishing here an open letter which we will be sending to the Oireachtas and other stakeholders: Download here.
Members of the Oireachtas,
The scale of the ongoing public health crisis around drugs prompted the establishment of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use. Their conclusions have been explicitly endorsed by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Drug Use. The evidence laid out has made it clear we cannot continue with a status quo that alienates, stigmatises, and punishes people who use drugs.
It is confounding that this government continues to do more of the same when we have all the evidence it’s making things worse AND it’s not what the public, experts or members of the dedicated Oireachtas Committee want. This comes after hundreds of hours spent considering expert testimony, including those who cautioned against decriminalisation, through the model of deliberative democracy Ireland has been praised for pioneering.
The government has repeatedly stated their drugs policy is guided by a “health-led” approach, yet they have rejected the key means of achieving this. The Citizens’ Assembly, upon considering the international policy evidence, called for the decriminalisation of the person using drugs. The cross-party Oireachtas Committee has provided clear evidence-based guidance on how and why this can be achieved.
Yet senior figures in government and law enforcement are dismissing their findings offhand, in spite of the demonstrable harms of continuing to address this health crisis through policing rather than healthcare.
We know from speaking to individual representatives from all political parties, that there is broad support for modernising Ireland’s drugs laws, reflecting popular support from the Irish people.
We call upon Oireachtas members to push for a proactive, principled, and evidence-based approach to decriminalising people who use drugs.
There are three reforms in particular that should be enacted as a matter of urgency;
- Repeal Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, so that a true public health approach can be substantively pursued without stigma and marginalisation, as recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly and three Oireachtas committees this decade.
- Reform Section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, to restore institutional trust through safeguards and recourse mechanisms around Garda use of stop-and-search powers, as per the 2014 Garda Inspectorate report.
- Engage with health professionals and international partners on developing and introducing pilot programmes for regulated access to lower-risk scheduled substances, as recommended by two Oireachtas committees this decade.
Yours,
- Cormac O’Loughlin, Brendan Minish and Chloe Victory on behalf of Crainn
- Peter McCarthy on behalf of An Glaiseacht
- Martin Condon and Aimee Brown on behalf of Grassroots Social Club Cork
- UISCE team and peers
To support our call you may:
- sign the petition to support this open letter here; https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/community-call-for-dail-action-on-decriminalisation
- print out a copy, sign it (with your name and constituency), and send it to your TDs and Senators (find politicians’ contact details here); https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/members/ . We have in the past ran email campaigns feel free to email if the postal option is difficult.
- Call your TDs’ office and tell them you support Crainn’s three-point call for drug policy reform
