Decriminalising Personal

In the wake of the collapse of the medical cannabis bill Catherine Byrne TD (Irish politician) has announced a proposed change to drug policy to change to a health based approach for possession of personal amounts of most drugs like cannabis, heroin and cocaine. I don't want to disrespect Catherine Byrne as she's one of the few politicians to respond to my email on the medical cannabis bill unlike anyone else in Fianna Gael, Labour, Sinn Fein or Fianna Fail. As my local TD this certainly carries favour with me come the next election and has made some great changes in the national drug strategy already, being able to approach it with more evidence based reasoning than most who deem themselves capable of ruling.

I'll briefly touch on the proposed change in policy but it's not the main point of this rant. I think Bill Hicks summed it up best with "sick people do not get better in jail". That is why we need a change in the way people in possession are handled. There's plenty out there about the societal benefits Portugal has experienced due to its change in policy and I recommend you research them yourself. Despite the gross misunderstanding of the benefits of rehabilitation over imprisonment by some at the Irish Times. This seems to be the 140 character attention span millenials are to be cursed with.

On to my main point, given the Oireachtas Health Committees 'it's too difficult' approach to the medical cannabis bill, what chance does a change to drug policy have? Logically no chance. If providing cannabis under a doctors directions under strict guidelines is too difficult how will our government committees cope with the complexities of figuring out personal use, adequate rehabilitation services and the risk of normalising drug use? Remember if you use drugs your of no use to society, regardless of your community work, income/employability or not causing harm to others, your presence is detestable and to quote a judge recently 'you should just leave the country'. Let us not forget the sacrosanct UN convention internationally banning drugs like cannabis, another blocker to the medical cannabis bill. According to our government this is adhered to by all countries, with the incredible blinkered approach ignoring the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, Finland, Spain, Uruguay and the USA. All of which are not adhering to the aforementioned convention. Nah, those countries don't exist in the eyes of our government.

So there's two ways the changes will go, with the logic above it won't pass or by some amazing corkscrew politics it does pass, so what does that mean? I'm not foolish enough to believe that decriminalising personal amounts is better for people than not allowing medical cannabis and I hope you're not either, but I am paranoid enough to think there's a lot more politicing going on than we're allowed see. I think we will see a change in the drug policy but not for the right reasons. This policy is coming from an established member of Fianna Gael, one of the oldest parties in the country not from an upstart independent who doesn't know his place. Gino Kelly is just a nobody whinging about what people need, he's not their to tow the line and let the big boys play their game. He's even foolish enough to try represent the people who elected him. If we see this policy pass its a clear sign that the supporting bodies to our government are partisan against anyone who is not part of the political establishment. Reinforcing the strength of the established parties further adding to the idea that voting independent is a waste of time because they can't get anything done. The upside if it passes is the health committee will have less argument against any future attempt to implement a medical cannabis bill, as the ground work will already be laid out for people being in possession and going against the almighty UN convention. Maybe they'll even trust doctors to do a job they spent up to 7 years studying to do. Unlike politicians who seem to spend less than 7 minutes studying how to run a country.

I don't know about the rest of you but these sorts of antics seem another step closer to good aule rope day but given those supporting the TDs we'll need a lot more than 158 nooses. Free helicopter rides for communists afterwards too.