There is a link between the drugs problem in certain areas and the approach of judges to drugs offences, Mr Noel Ahern, the Minister of State with responsibility for the drugs strategy, said yesterday.
Mr Ahern said Garda sources had told him that the drugs problem was greater in areas where judges took a lenient attitude to drugs-related offences. If lenient sentences were handed down in a certain area, then it was likely that the drugs problem would be greater in that area.
"Different District Court judges interpret it [ the drugs strategy] in different ways," he told the Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht affairs.
However, Mr Damien English TD (Fine Gael) said Mr Ahern was speaking as though it was a lost cause and that nothing could be done. "Who's in charge?" he asked.
Mr Ahern said the judiciary was independent and it was up to each judge to interpret the law as he or she saw fit.
Mr Ahern also expressed concern about the glamorisation of cocaine. Heroin, he said, was now being seen as "a loser's drug" while cocaine was regarded as a "safe, clean drug. It is anything but." When mixed with alcohol, cocaine caused anxiety, depression and "ferocious aggression", Mr Ahern said.
He also pointed to an increase in poly-drug use, where addicts were taking a cocktail of drugs, alcohol and prescription tablets, using "anything that's going on" on a regular basis. People knew the contents of a bottle of beer, he said, but they did not know what they were getting in a cocktail of drugs.
Mr Ahern said he was currently involved in a mid-term review of the National Drugs Strategy and hoped to complete this early next year. He said many queries had been raised during this review, including whether the Criminal Assets Bureau should now begin pursuing people on the second or third tier of the drugs trade.
Mr English said the money raised by CAB from the seizure of assets from drugs barons should be ring-fenced for use in the fight against drugs.
Meanwhile, Mr Peter Kelly (FF), said that while he would like to see alcohol controlled, "I honestly believe alcohol is not a major problem". Drugs posed the biggest problem in society today, he said. He called for mandatory jail sentences for anyone caught in possession of drugs.
