T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris and justice minister Jim O’Callaghan have been accused of “classism” over their comments on the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use.<\/p>\n
Gary Gannon, chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Drug Use also said there would be “no garda\u00ed standing outside the toilets of rugby clubs or pubs all over Ireland this week\u201d, and \u201cmiddle Ireland\u201d was not facing criminal retribution for taking drugs, the Irish Examiner has reported.<\/p>\n
The Social Democrats TD was responding to comments made by Simon Harris in the D\u00e1il on Thursday, when he urged caution around decriminalisation and raised concerns about “middle Ireland” facilitating gangland crime by \u201csnorting coke, popping pills, and smoking joints\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Oireachtas Committee on Drug Use published a report on Wednesday which contained 161 recommendations, including the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use and the introduction of a \u201chealth-led\u201d approach.<\/p>\n
Like Harris, O\u2019Callaghan called for \u201ccaution\u201d around decriminalisation, saying there was a need to be \u201ccareful\u201d about introducing laws or policies that could \u201cincrease the incidence of drug taking\u201d.<\/p>\n
The T\u00e1naiste and O\u2019Callaghan also acknowledged the need for a health response to drug addiction.<\/p>\n
Gannon told the \u201cnobody disagrees\u201d it is wrong to take drugs or that those taking them are funding gangs.<\/p>\n
However, he said it \u201cdoesn\u2019t get to the heart of the matter\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people popping pills, the people snorting coke, they’re not the ones getting criminal sanction,\u201d Gannon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf criminal sanctions worked, they wouldn’t be doing it, but they’re not the ones fearful that they’re going to get a criminal sanction.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecriminalisation will mostly benefit people who are the most vulnerable. We all go to the same festivals, we’ve all been to the same nightclubs, the evidence is that drugs are rampant throughout the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the same gangs Harris was referring to were now \u201cgrooming children into crime\u201d, and drug-related intimidation was now becoming more common.<\/p>\n
He said decriminalisation did not mean being \u201csoft on crime\u201d, but it \u201callows the guards to go after those who are actually enacting the violence rather than the ones who are suffering from it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gannon said both Harris and O\u2019Callaghan \u201clacked any depth\u201d when talking about this issue, branding this \u201cdisappointing\u201d as the work of Fine Gael and Fianna F\u00e1il members of the Oireachtas Committee on Drug Use was \u201cgenuinely amazing\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom both Simon Harris and the justice minister, there is genuinely both a classist element of it and also just a lack of understanding,\u201d Gannon continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe justice minister seemed to be conflating legalisation with decriminalisation. But then Simon Harris, when he’s asked about decriminalisation, referring to people popping pills and taking coke, they’re not the ones who are getting criminally sanctioned.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re talking about one community, but the law has only fallen on a very different cohort. Within that, there is absolutely a classist approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Harris told the they would refer Gannon to the \u201ctotality of his comments in the D\u00e1il and his previous work on introducing a health-led approach to the possession of drugs for personal use\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris and justice minister Jim O’Callaghan have been accused of “classism” over their comments on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-521121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}