The concluding statement of the Citizens’ Assembly, following on from a recommendation that has been interpreted as a boost for those seeking to decriminalise possession of illegal drugs, contains what is surely a contradictory reference to “greater responsibility.”
That, however, would only be if you read it as most people normally do within the context of personal responsibility.
However, the statement is, in fact, stating that “key recommendations include greater responsibility and accountability for drugs policy at national level through the establishment of a dedicated Cabinet Committee on Drugs to be chaired by the Taoiseach …” and so on.
The state, it seems, will absolve you of responsibility in this matter.
That strategy would actually lead us in an opposite direction to people taking personal responsibility as it will be up to the Taoiseach, it seems, in his spare moments, to solve the drugs problem.
To assist him and his or her colleagues in that task the Citizens’ Assembly has helpfully set the terms of reference, which are to implement “significant changes to laws governing penalties for possession of drugs for personal use, effectively amounting to decriminalisation.”
So all the customers of the gangs who murder, torture, bribe, intimidate and corrupt and who supply the essential ingredient in the lifestyle of many otherwise law-abiding people will no longer have to face the danger of having their collar felt by Old Bill.
Not only that, but whatever lingering pangs of conscience that perhaps their supplier is not exactly the Dr. Feelgood equivalent of your local Tesco off-license, will be removed.
It will be legal, so fire ahead.
This pushing of a, possibly already ajar, door in the legislature follows exactly the same template as the first Citizens’ Assembly on the 8th Amendment which encouraged the rapid moves towards the legalisation of abortion.
The Citizens’ Assembly had overwhelmingly recommended that the amendment not be retained, and despite what the Irish Times reported as “the consensus in the Oireachtas [being] that the assembly’s recommendations were an overly-liberal interpretation of the current thinking of middle Ireland on the issue,” we all know what happened.
The Assembly deliberations, influenced strongly by the pro-abortion side, had been preceded with one of several attempts by the far left in the Dail to push for abortion to be legalised. Likewise, the far left has been prominent in pushing for decriminalisation of drug use, and the TD to the forefront of this, Gino Kenny, was clearly happy with the outcome of the Assembly.
Observers will have noted too, the liberal use of the adjective word “change” in much of the reportage of all this, not least of all by Assembly Chair, Paul Reid, who spoke of the “mood for change.”
Others could not help themselves and threw in the adjective “radical” to describe the “change” that would come about.
The use of the word ‘change’ seems to be pretty much the clinching argument in any debate on pretty much anything in Ireland.
Good people are in favour of “change” and the best people are in favour of “radical change.”, or so we are led to believe. Indeed, only cranky oul curmudgeons at best, or more sinisterly “reactionaries” and what not, could ever be opposed to “radical change.”
And why is that? Well, because as Chairman Reid told us yesterday, the latest dollop of radical change will “change people’s lives. For the better.”
Well, how does he know that? Reid was once a member of the Workers Party and presumably once believed that Stalinist communism would change peoples lives. Which it certainly did. “For the better”? I think not.
However, I do know whose lives decriminalisation will change for the better: the drug dealers.
Why so? Well, for the simple reason that if drug possession for personal use is decriminalised it will mean that not only will Gardaí be unable to arrest any person who they find with say ten deals of cannabis or heroin or ecstasy or cocaine or whatever is deemed to be solely for one’s own personal diversion, but they will presumably not even be able to take said drugs from the person even if they know that person is a drug dealer rather than just a drug user.
Indeed, would the Gardaí even have the legal right any more to search anyone for drugs unless they believe that they are in possession of a much larger deposit of illegal substances – which, of course, the central cogs in the distribution of drugs almost never are. Nobody stands around on a street corner or sits in a pub with a kilo of whatever your favourite substance is.
In some places, where the local dispenser of weed knows his customer base, he or she or they have juveniles delivering the merchandise. Just like the local takeaway. Cash on delivery.
What the Citizens’ Assembly will have done, if the Oireachtas follows up as expected and decriminalises possession of drugs “for personal use,” is that it will have eliminated one of the major problems facing the drugs industry here, which is the seizure of their product.
Now, if The Man follows the logic of all those nice citizens who just want to bring about “change,” dammit “radical change,” the “Pigs” will have no more business taking a dealer’s carefully deliberated delivery that can be defended on the basis of the dealer’s own need, than they would in taking your pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, or even your batter burger and curry chips.
As for the Citizens’ Assembly as a concept, I am with Peadar TóibIn on this matter.
