Sir, – In his apologia for the legalisation of marijuana ("Decision looms for Government on legalising marijuana", October 29th), Eamonn McCann states with regard to the use of such a drug: "On every relevant measure – drugs-related deaths, mental illness, school drop-out rates, addiction levels, crime figures – none of the expressed fears of negative consequences has been borne out, while the predictions of proponents of legalisation have been vindicated".
This, on a day when the news bulletins reported that gardaí had seized a consignment of drugs in Tallaght with a street value of about €3 million and had also seized four guns with that consignment.
Which begs the question: what precisely is Eamonn McCann on? – Yours, etc,
HUGH McFADDEN,
Harold’s Cross,
Dublin 6W. Sir,– However welcome it might be that the joint Oireachtas committee on justice, defence and equality is to consider decriminalisation of cannabis, unfortunately such a moves will not go far enough.
Decriminalisation, while it has proven successful in Portugal, has not removed organised crime from the equation; only legalisation will achieve that end with the introduction of a defined regulatory control system in terms of production, distribution and sale for both medicinal and recreational cannabis.
Such regulatory controls as envisaged in the Regulation of Cannabis Bill introduced before the Oireachtas in 2013 would reduce/prevent the supply of cannabis to minors, prevent revenue from sales of cannabis going to criminal enterprises and reduce trafficking and the associated violence which exists in the unregulated black market which prohibition has created.
And while prohibition will always have knee-jerk supporters acting under the propagated assumptions that all drugs are bad, the case for legalisation is growing thanks in part to greater scientific awareness as to the medicinal value of cannabis, but also acknowledgement from jurists and policy makers that the unregulated black market in cannabis created by prohibition, affords no protection either to public health or indeed public safety.
– Yours, etc,
NIALL NELIGAN
Lecturer in Criminal Law
Dublin Institute of
Technology,
Dublin 2.