A new coalition tries to lay out what a “health-led” drug policy should actually mean

When Anne Connolly was a child, she suffered abuse in her home.

The trauma would eventually lead to her developing addiction issues, she told the inaugural public discussion held by the new Irish Coalition for Drug Reform last week.

In the mid-2000s, Connolly would spend numerous spells in prison for drug offences.

She would also meet a lot of the same faces over and over. All vulnerable people, she said.

“We weren't getting the help that we needed,” she said.

The event room in Buswells Hotel, a few hundred yards from the Houses of the Oireachtas, was packed, with another hundred or so people watching online as Connolly spoke.

“I was in and out for little things, stupid things like a bag of weed, and it was a fine, if you didn't turn up in court, there was a warrant out for your arrest,” she told the conference.

During one spell of incarceration, she joined a methadone programme, she said later, by phone on Thursday. 

But she wasn’t linked up to outside services upon release, she said, and ended up back on drugs soon after.

Connolly has now been in recovery for several years, and is a peer-support worker and team leader with Uisce, who advocate for people who use drugs.

While her own children ended up in the care system for a while, she considers herself blessed that they never went down the road she did, she said. They are now both adults and thriving, she said.

But many people she met across stints in prison were not as fortunate, she said. They watched their own children traumatised by the same experiences and systems that traumatised them.

She saw friends have their children placed in the care system, and grow up to get involved in criminal activity and drugs, and eventually end up in prison themselves, she said.

The social stigma and criminalisation of drug use need to end, she said.

Connolly was one of four speakers addressing the event on a health-centered approach to drug policy – and what that actually means.

“We're actually at a pivotal moment in Ireland with regard to our drug policy,” said another speaker, Claire McEvoy, head of policy and research at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL).

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use is about to make a series of recommendations, based on the findings of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, she said.

The citizens’ assembly said Ireland needed to pivot from the status quo to a comprehensive health-led response to drugs, with decriminalisation, she said.

The central question of the coalition’s event was, she said, “What is a health-led approach?”

The concept has been widely adopted in Ireland for the last decade, she said.

“We have language on it from the citizens’ assembly, from the Oireachtas committee, from the programme for government from 2025,” she said.

Still, the concept isn't well understood. “And its implementation is contradictory,” she said.

“It's confusing, and I go so far as to say it's very illogical,” she said. “We seem to speak out of both sides of our mouth when we talk about health-led response to drugs.”

Because you cannot profess to have a health-led response, while at the same time, prosecuting loads and loads of people for possession of drugs for personal use, she said.

Section three

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 criminalises personal possession of substances like cannabis and cocaine.

The new coalition is proposing a repeal of section three of the act, titled “Restriction on possession of controlled drugs”, said McEvoy, of ICCL.

And section 27.1, which outlines penalties for prosecution under section three, she said. “And this would decriminalise possession for personal use – in other words, no criminal charges could be brought.”

There were almost 4,000 convictions for a section three offense in the District Courts in 2025, she said.

In the last six years, there have been over 20,000 section three convictions, she said. 

More than 17,000 people were issued with a charge or summons specifically for cannabis possession between December 2020 and February 2024,  said speaker Cian Ó Concubhair, assistant professor of criminal justice at Maynooth University

Those dates are important, he said, because the adult cautioning scheme was expanded in 2020 to include cannabis possession, yet large numbers are still being prosecuted for it. 

It didn’t have to be this way, said Ó Concubhair.

How did Ireland end up with the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977? asked a member of the audience, honing in on the law that criminalises personal possession of substances like cannabis and cocaine.

Its roots lie in the influence of the United States, said Ó Concubhair.

Over the Atlantic, the “War on Drugs” was set in motion by Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, said Ó Concubhair by phone on Thursday.

But it was during the 1969–1974 presidency of Richard Nixon – who poured federal funding into it, which seeped down to local law enforcement – that it really ramped up, he said.

During Nixon’s tenure in the Oval Office, the United Nations created the Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971.

Other “Western bloc” countries were concerned that if they didn’t abide by international agreements that the United States cared about for its own geopolitical interests, they could face economic or political sanctions.

So, Ireland fell in line, he said.

Today though, even the United States has rolled back on the drug policies, domestic and international, that it so stridently pushed decades ago, he said.

Meanwhile, China and Russia – which were also heavily in favour of the 1971 convention at the time – remain its main flag bearers today, he said.

People seem to assume that this is how we've always done things in Ireland, said Ó Concubhair. But it isn't.

“We did not have personal possession penalties like section three before the 1977 Act,” he said.

Beyond section three

Under the coalition’s proposals, while section three should be gone, the definition of “controlled drugs” in section two would remain, said McEvoy.

All dealer activities, the sale, supply, cultivation, manufacture, preparation, import, etc, will all remain illegal, she said.

Meanwhile, the expansive garda powers, in Section 23, to undertake searches, along with the powers of arrest would remain too. “Gardaí would still have the powers that they need to tackle the illegal drugs trade,” she said.

There will be discussion as to what amount counts as personal use, and what for sale and supply, she said. “That conversation can be had.” 

“But it needs to come from a point of departure where criminalisation of people who use drugs is taken off the table,” she said.

A truly health-led response cannot be delivered while still criminalising the individual, she said.

However, it is also not enough, she said, just to repeal section three.

The state must also pile in serious investment in health, treatment, and social services for people who use drugs, she said.

The coalition isn’t talking about coerced engagement with treatment, said Ó Concubhair, who recently co-authored a paper on changing drug laws in Ireland.

“Which we know doesn't work, but it satisfies some of those, kind of deep puritanical urges which remain very prevalent,” he said.

Undoing criminalisation

Repeatedly at the event, speakers highlighted the lingering impact that a drug conviction can have on a person’s life – on their ability to work and travel, with stigma often lasting a lifetime.

There must be a conversation about spent convictions, said McEvoy. “People's lives have been devastated.”

The Criminal Justice Rehabilitative Periods Bill 2018 – which aims to amend the Criminal Justice (Spent Convictions and Certain Disclosures) Act 2016 to provide for broader and fairer access to spent convictions – has just gone through the second stage in the Dáil, she said.

“It's extremely important that those convictions are spent and that people can fully participate in the workforce and in society,” she said.

McEvoy said that ICCL has just released research looking at the literature, both from Ireland and internationally, on decriminalisation.

The evidence is clear, she said. “Criminalising people who use drugs is a policy failure and it needs to change.”

Criminalisation does not reduce drug use, she said, and fails to account for the reality of drug addiction and the situations people find themselves in.

“It's anchored in moralistic notions about the need to punish people instead of providing the help that they actually need,” she said.

It’s no surprise that the legal framework around criminalisation dates back to the 1970s, she said, when the impacts of drug policy and addiction were less understood.

“What we found is that it compounds trauma and stigma and stigmatisation of those people in society who need help and are least likely to be able to access it,” McEvoy said.

The research is also quite clear that decriminalisation does not lead to an increase in drug use either, she said. 

“And, in fact, can lead to positive health outcomes if accompanied by investment in health systems,” she said. 

Compassion and medical supervision

Connolly points to the country’s first medically supervised injection centre (MSIF) in Dublin as a shining example of how things can be when the drug user themself is no longer criminalised and compassion takes over.

Its initial 18-month pilot phase comes to an end in the coming weeks, said Geoff Corcoran, head of operations at Merchants Quay Ireland (MQI), at the event in Buswell’s.

An Coimisiún Pleanála granted the facility permanent planning permission on 15 May. 

The centre is a place where people can come and inject drugs they've sourced elsewhere, in a safe, clean, and dignified environment, overseen and supported by project workers and nursing staff, Corcoran said.

In the 18 months, he said, about 1,750 people have used the facility across more than 21,000 visits.

“What’s striking about that is well over 60 percent of those are people who are rough sleeping, are in emergency or unstable combination,” he said.

“They are people who otherwise would be using on the streets, using toilets, bus shelters and hostels, who now have somewhere clean, safe, warm, that they can come in and use, and get a bit of food afterwards,” he said. “If they want to link into other services, they can.”

More than half the people who've visited have come back and used it again, he said, with many coming on a daily basis – showing the trust that has been nurtured.

Peer workers with Uisce – like Connolly – who MQI partnered with, have played a huge part in building that trust, he said.

Despite concerns and local opposition, the last 18 months has not seen any uptick in anti-social behaviour in the area that many were worried about, he said.

There has been no “honey-pot effect” – people coming in from outside the area, gathering there, using or dealing drugs openly – Corcoran said.

A study around drug paraphernalia found that drug litter in the area fell by over 20 percent in the first six months, he said.

A report by St James's Hospital found that overdoses, and people presenting to the hospital for overdoses have fallen, in general, by about 40 percent from three months before it opened to three months after, he said.

“So even in terms of the impact on the wider health system, it's just shown that has had a really positive impact,” he said.

Also, though, they are aware that women aren't visiting at the same rate as men, he said. They make up about 25 percent of service users, he said.

As the MSIF moves towards permanency, the team has to figure out what the blocks are, and how to tackle that, he said.

Young people also aren't using it, he said. “Less than 1 percent of people who use it are under 25, so there's a huge gap there.”

This aligns with drug trends, he said. Younger people are not injecting drugs as much.

If someone drops in wanting to smoke crack cocaine or smoke heroin, he said, they cannot currently do that.

A facility is needed that allows people to consume other drugs that don’t involve injection, he said.

To do so, legislation will have to change, he said. And change moves very, very slowly – here and elsewhere.

The event at Buswells last week was MC’d by youth worker Eddie D’Arcy.

The coalition was not downplaying the harmful impact that drugs can have on people’s lives, he said.

Many organisations funded by the state to work with those who are struggling with drug addictions are members of, or support the work of, the coalition, he said.

“You can't say this is just a gathering of liberal minded people who just want to change the law for the sake of change,” he said.

“We are fully aware of the harm that drugs cause, the suffering, but we're just saying that, unfortunately, criminalising it adds to that,” he said.

Decriminalise vs Legalise

Ó Concubhair and McEvoy each stressed that the coalition was not advocating for legalisation. That’s separate from decriminalisation.

Legalisation is the regulated lawful access to drugs – similar as Ó Concubhair noted, to current regimes governing tobacco, alcohol and prescription medication.

Sale and supply would remain criminal offences, he said.

From the audience, Glenn Shekleton, said he was “in the cannabis business” in America and Canada.

“Why are we just settling for the low-hanging fruit of criminalisation?” he asked the room.

To stop short of full legalisation leaves money in the hands of criminals, he said.

The state has no control over the quality of the drug, who sells it or who they sell it to, he said.

He also said there was an issue with the “umbrella term, drugs”.

He asked whether they shouldn’t compartmentalise drugs, differentiating between cannabis and cocaine, for example.

If looking to decriminalise all drugs, surely it makes the endeavour more difficult, he said.

Independent senator, and coalition member, Lynn Ruane responded to Shekleton from the audience.

Decriminalisation refers to the individual, she said, not the substance. “We don't lock the substance up in prison.”

Opening conversations as to what types of drugs are decriminalised can reinforce a class issue, she said.

If they’re legalising just cannabis, it becomes “another middle-class endeavour”, she said.

It further alienates communities most harmed by the use of other drugs – like cocaine and crack cocaine – or more affected by stop and searches by An Garda Síochána, she said.

In her own closing remarks, Connolly said that, at the end of the day, this is about human beings, dignity, and keeping people alive.

People who use drugs are still mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, she said. “Most are carrying trauma people never see.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.