FOCUS IN FIGHT ON DRUGS GONE TO POT

Opinion: Vincent Browne

A few weeks ago I talked to several drug addicts in Dublin and to people
involved in the treatment of drug addicts. All of them concurred that there
was more heroin available on the streets of Dublin now then there has ever
been. They acknowledged that there had been a drought over a few weeks last
March but that now Dublin was awash with heroin. The drought had been
caused, apparently, by the capture of a large consignment of heroin but,
happily (as one of the addicts said), there had been no further major
seizures, certainly none of such significance as to interrupt the supply
even for a day.

One might wonder how this could be so, given the highprofile success of
the Garda and the Criminal Assets Bureau in targeting the drug barons and
putting so many of them in jail in the last year. The answer is,
regrettably, that the success is largely illusory. And for a few reasons.

The first is that for so long as there is a frenetic demand for hard drugs,
there will be supply. There is simply too much money to be made from the
trade and such a relatively small chance of being caught. The prize is well
worth the risk.

There is such relatively little chance of being caught in drug criminality
for the simple reason that those who are harmed by the crime are themselves
implicated in it. This is quite unlike any other crime, where the person
harmed has a real motive to seek retribution, for instance, someone who has
been robbed or assaulted.

Anyway, what this means is that even if all the main drug barons were put
away, new ones would quickly take their place because of the net incentive:
the money minus the risk of being caught.

The second reason for the illusion of success against the drug trade is
that the Garda has targeted, in the main, not the hard drugs business but
the soft drugs business. And to illustrate this point I am obliged to
resort to the annual report of the Garda Siochana for 1996. This
acknowledges (page 62): "Cannabis resin was involved in approximately half
of controlled drug offences" (in 1996). Ecstasy accounted for a further 12
per cent and heroin for only 15 per cent.

The report continues: "Cannabis was involved in 62 per cent of the cases
where controlled drugs were seized and analysed during 1996" (page 63).

The report shows that there were 3,412 cases of cannabis and cannabis resin
seizures in 1996, involving a total of 1,935 kg. This compares with just
664 cases of seizures of heroin (onefifth of the cannabis seizures).

Several of the highestprofile arrests of socalled drug barons, such as
Patrick Holland, concern people allegedly involved, not in hard drugs but
in cannabis.

In May the Ministerial Task Force on drugs, chaired by Pat Rabbitte,
produced its second report. This dealt, in part, with the use of soft
drugs. In a section dealing with the effects of cannabis (page 39) it
stated that "cannabis is not usually considered to produce physical
dependence" but went on: "Psychological dependence has been noted in some
users."

It noted "cannabis increases the workload of the heart" and people who have
some forms of mental illness may suffer a relapse if they take cannabis.

That was all they could come up with. Some people have a psychological
dependence on cannabis (like some people have a psychological dependence on
Coronation Street) and in the cases of some people it is bad for their
heart and nerves (like the Progressive Democrats are bad for the heart and
nerves of some people?).

The task force was similarly unimpressive on the harmful effects of ecstasy
use.

That second report avoided a piece of silliness in the first, published in
October 1996. This described cannabis as a gateway to hard drugs. They
thought better, apparently, of this line of argument by the time they got
to their second report seven months later. And they were right.

The first report on the use of hard drugs showed clearly and graphically
that hard drug use is concentrated almost exclusively in the deprived urban
areas of our cities, notably Dublin. The gateway to hard drugs is clearly
deprivation, and any suggested link with soft drugs is, at least in our
circumstances, nonsense.

The case for the decriminalisation of the sale, supply and possession of
these drugs is overwhelming, but that is not the point here. The point here
is that massive Garda effort and resources have gone into the detection and
prevention of the crimes associated with cannabis and that this is a
thorough waste of time. If all that Patrick Holland et al did was to supply
and sell cannabis and ecstasy, they would be hardly deserving of the
slightest censure, let alone prosecution and imprisonment.

In the absence of the decriminalisation of the supply and sale of cannabis
and ecstasy, the Garda should treat lightly crimes associated with these,
as they do such infractions as being in public houses after closing time,
driving without wearing seat belts and brothelkeeping. We need wide
tolerance, not zero tolerance.

There would be a positive benefit to this, apart from that of saving Garda
time and resources as well as the resources of the prosecution service and
courts. This would be to remove the trade in soft drugs from the hardened
criminal fraternity, undermining their profits and their livelihoods.

The recently published report of the Steering Group on the Efficiency and
Effectiveness of the Garda Siochana (which, incidentally shows that Ireland
has by far the lowest incidence of crime per 1,000 population of countries
selected for comparison) avoids this issue entirely.

But surely, central to the role of the Garda should be an identification of
the social harms that are appropriate for a police force to monitor and
prevent and their withdrawal from those areas of activity that relate to
behaviour that causes no social harm or minimal social harm or where
policing is inappropriate?

A great deal of social harm is caused by those who misappropriate public
resources (e.g. unpaid taxes) or abuse the environment, and yet the focus
of the Garda is hardly directed at all at these. Surely policing in such
areas is entirely appropriate? It is significant, for instance, that the
crime of taxevasion is not even listed among the catalogue of crimes in
the annual Garda reports.

In the meantime, the Garda would do well to forget about cannabis, unless
of course their Minister drives them to pot.