Ireland to 'decriminalise' small amounts of drugs for personal use | Hacker News Reader

Ireland to 'decriminalise' small amounts of drugs for personal use

independent.co.uk

348 pointswerber157 comments

It is a step in the right direction, but it still half-baked. Without decriminalizing production as well, they are maintaining a monopoly for those that works outside of the law. Which means a very profitable tax free market that has to recreate all of the state features like physical safety and insurance policies from scratch. Every nation that forbids something that is in demand, is gestating its own competition. The laws of capitalism are brutal and can not be escaped. I wonder how far we can go by following the principle that it should be easier for demand to be satisfied legally than illegally.

Far from half baked (theres a pun here if I look hard enough), Portugal stepped up and did the experiment already. And it worked.

The OP's point is that decriminalization leaves the market, the money and the tax revenue with the criminals. As a taxpayer, I want a fair proportion of the money to go to the government, and only full legalization and regulation does that.

But first we have to mollify the masses that the decades of War-On-Drugs FUD is untrue. Show them that drug users are fellow humans, and easier access to the tools they use to generate happiness isn't going to cause rioting on the streets.

Exactly. One person's idea of a half-baked measure is another's idea of incremental progress. When you can demonstrate that some of what reactionaries believe is flatly wrong it gets a lot easier to chip away at the rest of the errors they've managed to enshrine in law.

And yet another's idea of a slippery slope, sliding towards chaos and the downfall of society. I personally think this is a good idea, but it's pretty clear to me that that's not a universally-held opinion.

It's pretty close to universally held among decent, intelligent people who aren't personally invested in the drug war. As time goes by, and more governments successfully turn their backs on the drug warriors, support for the drug war will become a badge of corruption, idiocy, or worse.

Fully agreed. I support fairly high taxes on it, but full legalisation. And it is true that people still need convinced, but different places are starting experiments now. I've heard the US puts anti-drug language in contracts and stuff - if true, the faster the US loosens up, the more quickly change can be possible.

Oddly, I was talking to a man in Amsterdam about half-baked laws such as that. Making as much of the process transparent as possible means there is more likely to be "safe" products, comparatively, and legalisation with controls seems to be the way to go so far.

I agree with you but remember that Ireland and the UK are islands, which immediately puts them in a better position to deal with smuggling compared to countries that share long land borders. I think this is why island nations are generally a bit more conservative - it's much more practical to control imports.

That's a very broad conclusion to draw!

True, that's why I qualified it as an opinion - it's just a hunch of mine.

Coastline is no easier to police and allows transit at any point. Cornwall practically counts pre-20th-c smuggling as a traditional heritage industry.

Although I think in practice most drugs come by air like in the rest of the world.

It's doable, but it's not that easy. If coastline allowed transit at any point then we wouldn't rely so heavily on harbors...but I don't want to bore you with maritime stories. Put it this way, if you want to smuggle onto an island you need to do at least a bit of advance planning and figure out who you're going to have to pay, or how much risk you will tolerate if you own a boat or a plane. The same is true of smuggling by car or truck on a continent, but that's a journey you can generally undertake a lot more casually than a boat or plane trip.

The Irish Navy is tiny, and there are countless inlets and bays which a smuggler could use. One popular drug smuggling route is Colombia -> up the coast of West Africa -> Ireland, and then onwards to the UK market.

There was a famous incident a few years back where a relatively small boat deployed from a 'mothership'; sank in high seas (heh), dumping its cargo of hundreds of millions of cocaine into the water. Locals were finding bales of coke worth €1.75m each on the beaches in the area.

If you look at what has been intercepted, and what must get through to the end market, then billions of Euros worth of the drug must be smuggled through Ireland/Irish waters.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/icrime/wild-coast-sinks...

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/cocaine-in-yacht-s...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/08/drugsandalcohol.dr...

Couldn't agree more but I don't think it has to do with capitalism, but economics. Regardless of the system in place, if there is a high enough demand for a product, as there is drugs, there will be a supply.

An interesting example is how drug use is actually rampant in US prisons, some of the most controlled environments in the country. No ones idea of a free market capitalism, but somehow drugs are still very accessible.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/27/drugs-inside...

the one I know for sure about involved visitation.

wives and girlfriends are asked to smuggle something in for a significant other inside of themselves. a toilet trip later it gets removed and passed off, and voila. even a small amount can curry quite a bit of favor and of course cash. because of the risk involved, the price is well marked up.

seems like the guards would have to be on the take, though, because I'm not sure how the inmate is supposed to get it from the visitation room back to his cell.

I'm sure they have something figured out, anyone who can light a cigarette with an outlet is bound to be a crafty cat.

my guess is that guards turn a half blind eye, something to do with being more easier to control a prison where inmates are allowed some degree of freedom and self organizing. I'll research this later, it's an interesting subject.

some interesting stuff that came up while looking trough research material:

http://www.garysturt.free-online.co.uk/zimbardo.htm simulated prison experiment going downhilll

this one is about cigarettes and seem to support the point: http://tpj.sagepub.com/content/81/2/142.short

"This study describes how bans can transform largely benign cigarette “gray markets,” where cigarettes are used as a currency, into more problematic black markets, where cigarettes are a highly priced commodity."

It is a step in the right direction, but it still half-baked.

We all want the revolution overnight but it takes careful and calculated steps to make progress. Consider Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) when accosted by a Republican Rep who claimed the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act was a sly step towards the process of legalizing marijuana outright. Barney's (paraphrased) answer: Yep, you got me. That is our goal.

And of course once you've legalized the selling of marijuana, you're potentially opening the doors for other substances. But they come with their own set of problems and taboos so it will take time.

Initiatives have to start somewhere and demonstrate their utility with minimal fuss. Baby steps, but in the right direction.

"And of course once you've legalized the selling of marijuana, you're potentially openings the doors for other substances"

I agree you've got to start somewhere. I find the argument that marijuana is a door opener to other substances is flawed though. If pot didn't exist, would the same argument be made for liquor stores, tobacco sales, coffee shops, red bulls at 7/11, cough medicine at Walmart etc? Or is it just because of the stigma around marijuana?

Tobacco and alcohol are legal and used because they were staples of the founding of the US. Tobacco was one of the chief exports of the colonies and the new US for centuries and made a lot of people rich and even more people happy.

Alcohol is legal in almost every country on Earth because you can make it out of almost everything. What might end up happening is regional fermentation variants are stigmatized.

Cannibis was persecuted and outlawed in the US because of extreme zenophobia against Mexican migrants in the US after the Mexican-American war. Heres a longer form history of it: http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/how-did-marijuana-become-ille.... Its the same bizarre backwards thinking that leads to republican frontrunner's garnering praise for wanting to build a concrete wall on the scale of the Great Wall of China to keep impoverished refugees out.

Pot got banned because it was gaining popularity and was threatening entrenched tobacco interests. The same thing happened to opium with Chinese migrant workers. The vast majority of the "controlled substances" that are not particularly life threatening (heroin and cocaine are probably the only outstandingly dangerous ones due to immediate bodily effects, the psychedelics are dangerous because of the behavioral changes usually) but were simply outlawed because they competed with US tobacco and alcohol for consumers drug addictions and habits.

So if pot did not exist, we would probably be a similar state to where we are now - migrant Mexicans would have probably used opium or tobacco, and we have already seen the reactions to both of those in the American historical psyche. We would just probably be pushing MDMA / Meth / LSD legalization instead. Meth most likely, since it also has medical applications.

MDMA and LSD also have medical applications. http://www.maps.org/

They do show some promise in the unfortunately limited research done but it is nearly impossible to conduct legal research on the medicinal potential of highly controlled substances

They're also immensely fun.

>cocaine are probably the only outstandingly dangerous ones due to immediate bodily effects

Is that true about ? I "know" that heroin ends up causing a physical addiction + all the risks with the way it's used but I was under the impression that cocaine was in the same category as speed/extasy in terms of downsides.

Just quoting wikipedia on this one, but:

Cocaine addiction occurs through accumbal ΔFosB overexpression, which arises through transcriptional regulation and epigenetic remodeling of the nucleus accumbens.

It is definitely physically addictive, and alters brain chemistry through long term use. It also causes accelerated heart rate.

I'll give its not nearly as bad as tobacco, but it is in a league above psychedelics.

Sure but MDMA/meth aren't psychedelics either but you made a distinction between them so I was curious why. From my high school experiences I would put them in the same league (although I know very little about the science behind them they are all recreational party drugs, former being a lot cheaper than the latter)

The GP was comparing cocaine to (substituted) amphetamines, which as with most dopaminergic psychostimulants also cause addiction via changes to ΔFosB expression. Hence, I'd say the comparison isn't incorrect, even if the GP's appraisal of the potential harm of speed/ecstasy may have been understated.

However, ΔFosB expression is also impacted by all kinds of behaviors and substances, including palatable/calorie-dense foods, exercise, and sex. There's a lot of things that alter brain chemistry in the long term if abused.

There's also the hemp angle. There had recently been advances in the production of hemp paper and the plant produced fibers that DuPont wanted to replace with Nylon. DuPont and Hearst (who had a lot of money invested in tree-based paper) had economic incentives to reduce/eliminate Hemp from our society.

Hearst's yellow journalism tapped into the xenophobia and racism of the average American to convince them that this Devil's weed would have Mexicans and Negroes rampaging all across the country and having sex with white women.

I think the only hint of truth in gateway drug theory is that once you're consuming something that's illegal you are more likely to end up dealing with people who are also selling other illegal drugs which, if you're into that sort of thing, makes it easier to experiment with new drugs.

If alcohol was illegal and thus only sold by traffickers who also happen to stock cocaine, the same would equally apply. It's more about the markets rather than the substance.

Of course, the vast majority of pot is either homegrown or, if commercially produced, supplied into a chain of friends by someone who knows someone who knows someone. That's how I guess pot is commonly bought: "Hey, you had this friend of yours who uses pot, I wonder if he'd sell me a bit, too?"

The exposure to other drugs, for the average pot smoker, is very negligible in practice even if the original source is in the drug business that operates on the more serious side.

Socialist revolutions happen overnight but capitalist changes need to happen over time. In case of India it took 50 years for the government to realize that it is nonsensical to restrict how many nut bolts a factory could produce.

What is that a reference to?

As opposed to, say, capitalist revolutions that happen overnight and socialist changes that happen over time? What's the point of adding "emotional" qualifiers to truisms?

USSR and the Eastern Bloc fell quickly.

I disagree that it's half-baked, in fact this is a huge victory. A step in the right direction, indeed. Now, if only we can keep from going two steps back.

> Which means a very profitable tax free market

That's totally untrue. Drug lords still have to contend with law enforcement raids and busts or bribing govt officials for their goods and products to "reach the consumer" constituting in effect a tax on their operations.

That's only a tax in the very narrow sense that it keeps prison officers and policemen in jobs. I want the money to go towards general taxation. In Britain some £6bn is spent on cannabis each year. Taking a third of that in tax raises enough to reverse half of the chancellor's very controversial recent cuts to tax credits.

Where does the £6b number come from? It seems very high to me.

A 2014 survey has the following numbers: 31% have ever used illegal drugs, 21% still take illegal drugs "even if only occasionally". 93% of people who have tried illegal drugs have tried weed. [1]

Let's say the UK population is 65 million, that makes 13.65m "occasional or more often" illegal drug users, and if we assume that all of the 93% of those who have tried weed still smoke weed, that's 12,694,500 weed smokers. So with that number, to hit a total spend of £6B they would be spending an average of £472 each, or £9/week - I guess that's about 0.5-1g/week. I could believe that amount as an average among "weed smokers", but given the number includes people who say they do it "only occasionally", I suspect the long-tail means that £6b is unrealistically high.

That said, if you have a source for that I'd be interested to see more info.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/05/-sp-drug-use-...

I tracked this down eventually (took a while, sorry!) The number comes from a Home Office report:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110220105210/rds...

However that's up to 6.6 billion for the whole illegal drugs market (not just cannabis). So the figure for cannabis would be much lower (see also that report).

Thanks - and OK, for all drugs makes a lot more sense to me.

Why would you need more tax revenues from this economic activity? To fund addiction treatment programs?

To really solve the social problems, the sale needs to be legalised.

Making the sale a criminal offence puts money into the hands of organized crime, drives up the prices, forces addicts to steal to buy their drugs and leads drug users to take "worse" drugs like methamphetamine because "better" drugs aren't easily available.

Drugs need to be made legally to ensure quality, to remove harmful impurities, to ensure the dosage is consistent and predictable which reduces risk of overdose, and especially to ensure that when a person consumes "drug A", they do not in fact get a dose of the more addictive/harmful "drug B" (i.e. methamphetamine).

Governments stand to make tax dollars off marijuana too.

There's a trail of logic that must be followed - if it is OK to buy and consume drugs, why is it not OK to sell them?

The only caveat is that methamphetamine should remain illegal to buy or use. The idea being that people will use "less harmful" drugs than methamphetamine because they are available cheap, easy and clean. The strongest possible justification for legalization of sale and use of drugs is to minimize usage and supply of the greatest of all evils - methamphetamine.

We need to accept that people want to get high. You can't arrest that human desire out of existence. We can however remove the harmful effects of criminalization of the sale of drugs.

Criminalization fills prisons, wastes police and legal resources, destroys families, prevents people having functional lives and creates both organized crime and petty crime.

N.B. personally I'm not interested taking in any drugs except alcohol and caffeine so I'm not angling to be able to get high. I wouldn't take em even if they were legal and free.

Why do you think meth is worse than heroin?

Meth junkies go on violent psychotic rampages killing and injuring other people and have no other thought in their brains except to get more meth. When I read in the newspaper about someone murdering their family I expect, and often find either a statement or suggestion that the perpetrator was using meth.

Heroin junkies go to sleep and are making a poor health choice but it is possible with clean heroin to lead a functional life including work and family.

Drugs that harm the user are "better" (as such) whereas drugs that result in harm to others are "worse".

Apparently the FDA/DEA disagree, as methamphetamine is legal in the US and doctors can prescribe it for attention issues or obesity. Sales are somewhere above $10M a year. (This is just for methamphetamine. Other amphetamines like Adderall sell like 100x more.)

Whereas diamorphine, aka Bayer Heroin(TM)[1], is deemed to have zero medicinal qualities.

The DEA is almost certainly wrong (as usual), though if amphetamines were easily obtainable at good prices, the market for meth would likely crash.

And you're right that real opiates (to contrast with dirt mixed with fentanyl and sold as "heroin") seem to have little negative effects. Most of the damage is due to the legality and financing issues, which are entirely artificial. (Opiates are incredibly cheap to produce.)

1: Trademark stolen as part of WWI "reparations".

Meth and Heroin addicts tend to be poorer and prone to criminal activity, than pharmaceutical amphetamine and opiate users. Additionally, adverse reactions, are more likely when the drug is unregulated.

Do you know how much 1g of heroin cost?

It's been a while since I knew people who did heroin, but the people I knew who did it bought it in packs and bundles not grams. One dose (pack) was ~10$ and a bundle which, I think was, 12 doses was ~100$. And if memory serves me correctly Oxycontin was like ~30$ a pill. Too many of the people I used to know died from it, and I frequently think about how things could have been different for the people who overdosed and the people around them were afraid to call for help because it would have put them in criminal jeopardy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_harmfulness

Notice that heroin is the worst, both personally and socially. This is well established. Also, I would not use popular media as the basis for any sound argument. :(

Herion junkies lead a functional life including work and family? Seriously, what the fuck?! Cite just one source that heroin addiction is controllable because the addict uses "clean" heroin. Heroin addiction is the problem, not the adulterants, so purity is unimportant.

Wow. :(

Edit: This is the first time I wished I could downvote. lol. "Clean" heroin...

> Herion junkies lead a functional life including work and family? Seriously, what the fuck?! Cite just one source that heroin addiction is controllable because the addict uses "clean" heroin.

There are countless rock stars, for example, that maintained families and highly successful careers while regularly using heroin.

> Heroin addiction is the problem, not the adulterants, so purity is unimportant.

Heroin addiction doesn't kill you. What kills you is when you buy a gram that's three times as pure as the last one so you accidentally overdose.

Even if you don't believe addicts can lead normal lives, as long as they're shooting up clean, cheap heroin of predictable purity there at least exists a chance of rehabilitation and a normal life in their futures.

Agreed. And if your heroin costs cents instead of dollars you don't have to spend your available time trying to steal money to buy it, risking arrest and jail as well as making innocent people victims of your cash-seeking crimes.

Anecdotes are not a valid citation.

Heroin is the most harmful drug, statistically, according to numerous studies.

Not heroin, but a completely unknown substance presented as heroin that probably consists of around 30% heroin.

Heroin addiction is one of the most harmful documented drug-addictions. The need for heroin, physically and psychologically, is the driving force behind the social and personal damage attributed to heroin.

People do not get addicted to non-narcotic adulterants and become prostitutes. A cutting agent like caffeine or sugar is probably the safest ingredient...

> People do not get addicted to non-narcotic adulterants and become prostitutes. A cutting agent like caffeine or sugar is probably the safest ingredient...

The biggest physical danger of heroin use is the risk of overdose. The main reason people overdose is because of the adulterants - they don't know how potent the stuff is. x mg of batch A might be a good high, whereash x mg of batch B will kill you from an overdose.

Even if the adulterants are themselves safe, the presence of them is a risk to the users, because they make it impossible to determine dosage.

30% how generous. In EU the average purity for heroin is ~2%.

Wikipedia states "The average purity of street heroin in the UK varies between 30% and 50% and heroin that has been seized at the border has purity levels between 40% and 60%" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#Adverse_effects). It doesn't actually have a citation that confirms that, but another quick google gives http://drugscope.org.uk/how-pure-are-street-drugs/ saying "The 2010/11 police recorded average purity for heroin was 30 per cent."

So I'm inclined to believe the 30% number unless you have a source for thinking it's much lower.

I stand corrected, my information was wrong. Thanks for the sources.

2% is definitely not accurate, consuming that would be a very unpleasant experience.

Do you have links to those studies?

A lot of the harm from heroin come from adulterants which are injected, causing abscess; or from the illegality of providing clean needles and injection advice and safe spaces to inject which causes infection etc; or from the illegality of providing maintenance doses from doctors which cause people to burgle or sex work to get money to buy the drug.

Heroin is undoubtedly an unwise choice, but keeping it illegal has been a public health disaster.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774.full.html#T1

There are more, but freely accessing journals online is troublesome. I have NEVER seen any study say heroin is anything but one of the most crippling and dangerous addictions. I am still waiting for anyone to cite one...

Your first one is available here: http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_old/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf

Have a read. Do you think it still supports your position? It says, clearly, that alcohol is more harmful than heroin. Are you calling for alcohol to be made illegal?

Or: Bob is a heroin addict. Should Bob continue to buy heroin from the street? That heroin will be adulterated; of unknown strength; sold by criminals; and may require Bob to engage in acquisitive crime or prostitution to get the money needed. It will be injected with whatever needle Bob has, which may not be sterile and may be shared with other people, some of whom have blood borne diseases. Or should Bob be prescribed heroin by his doctor. That heroin will not be adulterated; will be of known strength; will be supplied with clean needles and advice on safe injection; and will not require Bob to engage in acquisitive crime or prostitution to get it.

Again: Heroin is undoubtedly an unwise choice, but keeping it illegal causes very great harm.

I am not saying anything about legalization. I am arguing that heroin is known to be hugely dangerous, and sometimes classified as the most dangerous drug to use.

Yeah, alcohol, meth, crack all rank similarly and should be avoided unless you know are very sure how you will react.

People seem to be confused what my position actually is. That is mostly my fault though...

Diacetylmorphine is probably the best opiate analgesic modern medicine has. British ambulances still carry it as a first-line drug for acute myocardial infarctions. It's an anxiolytic, a wonderful painkiller, and dilates corony arteries. It's not as widely used as it probably should be because of the feat of addiction. Recreational heroin drug use is dangerous because of the illegality - you don't know what you're getting. The varying levels of purity have twofold danger - increasing the risk of overdose due to getting a more pure drug and using the larger dosage you became accustomed to from the less pure stuff, as well as the risk of the substance used to cut the heroin being harmful in itself.

Historically, heroin was used by people that WERE holding down jobs[0].

>According to Dr James Mills, a historian who has traced drug use through the 20th century, they tended to be doctors or middle-class patients who could afford to sustain a habit.

Additionally, if we were to legalize heroin's use, we could sell naloxone packaged alongside the heroin. Naloxone, if you're not familiar, is an opiate antidote that is extremely effective. This would greatly reduce the chance of an overdose having fatal effect.

As I've noted with meth elsewhere in this thread, I'm not suggesting anyone go and pick up a drug habit, but the vast majority of the dangers related to heroin (and most drugs - though obviously stuff like jimson weed is just plain bad for you...) are related to the illegal nature of it, and even those inherent to the drug itself can be mitigated much more easily in a legal setting

[0]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4647018.stm

Just one link after 10 second Google search:

Fentanyl-linked heroin deaths part of larger drug overdose trend

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-02-08/news/bs-md-sun-i...

How is that a citation proving that heroin is controllable if only the heroin was pure? Overdoses happen even with pure heroin.

Also, I assumed "citation" would infer that a reputable book or scholarly white paper should be referenced, not a very short newspaper article.

Though, we both seem to be unwavering in our views, so I am cool with stopping this back and forth. :)

>> How is that a citation proving that heroin is controllable if only the heroin was pure

I didn't say that.

My point was that people can lead functional lives on heroin with families and jobs. If the heroin is impure, laced with dangerous chemicals or of unknown strength then the cutting agents can harm people or they may overdose.

Clean heroin is free of harmful cutting agents, of known purity and not laced with other drugs. You mock the term "clean heroin" but that's what it is.

You misread my original post.

I mock "clean heroin" because at it's purest, it is still the most harmful drug. More harmful than meth, crack, cocaine, etc, etc.

I cited Wikipedia.

You have still cited nothing of worth.

Can you compare psychotic violence of heroin addicts versus meth addicts?

That's what I mean by harmful. Meth addicts are psychotically violent and are responsible for countless murders and attacks.

Heroin addicts get smacked out and unconscious. Perhaps dangerous to themselves.

Go to an NA meeting (non-addicts can go, just be courteous) or read some white papers about drug use.

You are avoiding, or simply ignorant of, many aspects of drug addiction.

Heroin related problems are rarely caused by the substance itself, rather lack thereof.

>The only caveat is that methamphetamine should remain illegal to buy or use. The idea being that people will use "less harmful" drugs than methamphetamine because they are available cheap, easy and clean. The strongest possible justification for legalization of sale and use of drugs is to minimize usage and supply of the greatest of all evils - methamphetamine.

You seem to have an oddly demonized view of methamphetamine. The reaction on people is fairly similar to dextroamphetamine, which you probably know of by the name of 'Adderall', and we prescribe it frequently.

Meth is mildly neurotoxic and adderall is not, so it's definitely worse for you, but we let people do plenty of things that are bad for them.

Not that I'm suggesting anyone go out and develop a meth habit, but if you're arguing in favor or legalizing everything but meth you're already arguing in favor of quite a few things that can cause personal damage.

The violence surrounding meth is much the same as the violence surrounding most other illegal substances - driven by the actions taken to procure funding of the substance or procuring the substance itself.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying meth is "not that bad"? If so then you and I must be reading different newspapers and watching different TV channels.

I think his point is that (a) it's hard to say meth is that much worse than other hard drugs like heroin or crack, and (b) over-the-counter meth that's of a guaranteed potency and without adulterants might not be as harmful to the user as the bluish, vinegar-smelling stuff your second cousin Skeeter cooks up.

thats exactly what he is saying. Relative to some illegal substances, meth is not worse or somehow more heinous. Part of the problem when many talk about the legalization of drugs is the inherited biases one acquires from paying attention or taking at face value what sources like the media or government say about these substances. The problem isn't that certain substances are much worse than others, it's the fact that these substances (harmful or otherwise) are relegated to the black market.

In fact, methamphetamine is prescribed by doctors for serious cases of narcolepsy, under the name Desoxyn.

Your drug knowledge stems from newspapers and TV shows? No wonder you know nothing about them.

It doesn't matter if using meth will 100% guarantee that someone's life is ruined, people still need to have that freedom. Because denying it actually leads to worse outcomes, and worse negative externalities.

The distinction is whether or not the user harms other people when stoned. Meth addicts become psychotically violent.

Ignoring the quality of the article, I am struck by one thing.

Why has Ireland all of a sudden taken such a progressive shift? First national recognition of gay marriage, now this?

I'm loving it, wherever it came from.

I came here to say this. This is a huge departure from the status quo in Ireland, very surprised to see this.

There's nothing new here, Ireland has been changing at a very rapid pace for the last 20 years - becoming progressively more liberal due to many influences, not least the fact that all of a sudden most young people were staying in the country during the celtic tiger years.

Irish guy here (although I live in California now). Demographics, mass abandonment of the Catholic church in recent years (not least due to sex scandals, and the bruising effects of the global financial crisis, which has led to a more pragmatic assessment of priorities.

I'm very happy about it too. While I'm not in any rush to head home to the inclement Irish weather it feels like a great validation to see this tide of social liberalization. I was born in 1970 and grew up in a country where divorce was illegal, corporal punishment in schools was legal (and liberally dispensed), and drug use was presented as a moral/class failing. Growing up in a violent household in a country where family life was reified, I fled to the UK as soon as I was old enough to leave home and have rarely been back since. Maybe I should start planning a holiday.

Another Irish expat, living in Germany.

The cynic in me says the timing of the gay marriage, the abortion referendum on abortion and now this progressive drug stance is the government playing a game of misdirection with the electorate.

This current government was elected on the specific promise of fixing the economic mess and getting rid of the disastrous policy of bank debt being hoisted onto the sovereign balance sheet.

I know plenty of people who are struggling financially, losing their homes and so on back in Ireland, but by using controversial social measures (which I agree are a step in the right direction) they are distracting from their pathetic failure to fix the economy (any progress you see economically has nothing to do with the government, but a recovery of the global economy and the multinationals in Ireland along with it. We have very little indigenous industry, startups, etc.)

Oh come on, Ireland has been the fastest growing country in Europe for the last few years. This government has done a pretty good job considering the circumstances. Would you rather they had gone the Greek route for example?

With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about. The headline figures for Ireland are very misleading. The bond spreads are coming down because Irish banks were bailed out at enormous expense and are buying Irish govt debt.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands have left the place for good due to a lack of opportunity. Many ordinary people are still struggling badly. Ireland and Greece are nothing alike, we never went on a spending spree like Greece did, it was all the dirty dealings with the bank bailout that made the recession so long lasting.

Nah. We were already screwed when this government got in because of the last one. To lay the blame at their door is ridiculous. They did a good job with the hand they were dealt IMHO (particularly Noonan). Furthermore the bond spreads aren't "coming down", they've been next to nothing for a while. Unemployment is still too high but a lot better than it was.

A very random and uninformed guess -

A lot of tech companies have opened up offices in Ireland (ostensibly due to tax laws) and have started to attract young, progressive talent into the country. This investment has helped the economy and raised the standard of living in Ireland, so less people are concerned with enforcing conservative/religion-based regulation.

This article has some better stats/anecdotes:

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/12/08/368770530/u...

I don't know if you can give the credit to tech companies, but Ireland is keeping more of it young people in the country after a decade of emmigration and brain drain. Their more progressive attitudes probably have something to do with it.

I'd really love if this were the case, but sadly it really isn't.

The affect of US tech companies coming here has largely been a small-scale version of Palo Alto-esque gentrification of a small area of Dublin (docklands) and any improvements in standard of living being limited to a small white male tech elite. Overall poverty is up (we're dealing with a very serious recent homelessness crisis) and average standards of living have dropped significantly in the country otherwise and reported economic improvements in world news are typical of our conservative government's focus on primarily export-based GDP figures, etc. over actual progressive population-based data.

I think on the other hand, politics aside, there is a definite strong movement away from the church at least, which I think is largely a lingering result of the various very public abuse scandals over the past few decades.

Edit: That NPR article is interesting in its focus on Cork. I live in Dublin, so I can't really comment much anecdotally on Cork, but with the exception of Apple, almost all major US tech firms that have HQ-ed here (Google, Facebook, MS, Twitter, etc.) are Dublin-based, so it seems an unusual focus in that regard.

Thanks for the inside perspective - hard to get a real sense of how a country is doing from GDP/economic indicators. Wishful thinking on my part that tech wealth would trickle down more effectively in Ireland than in the US.

On the homelessness crisis:

Amazing that housing prices in Dublin have jumped up 22.3% YoY. [1] What else do you see contributing to the rise in poverty/homelessness and the decline in living standards in Ireland?

[1] http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Ireland/Price-Hist...

Dublin is a different animal than the rest of Ireland because the country is very centralised there (despite some efforts to combat this).

It would like measuring the average house price in the US by just measuring the BA.

I can buy a house in my hometown which is well serviced by schools and more than the essentials for about €150k.

The one thing that Ireland gets right is access to 3rd level education. I'm constantly floored by the amount of debt that students in North American and UK (or wherever else) pile up getting educated. I will concede that their standard of education is probably higher but, personal experience, I see very little difference in the average standard of graduate produced.

Coming from a working class background, I was lucky enough to be on the grant system so would have received about €3.5k a year to attend college - it wasn't huge and I obviously had to work part time but it certainly helped.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to arrive at is that the best way for a society to progress is via education and I think we're doing good (though it could be much better) at this right now.

Despite there not being any fees in IrelNd, you have to pay a student contribution fee (which as a grant receiver you were exempt from) which is currently 3.5k/year and set to continue rising. Really the grant gives you more like 7k/yr as you don't have to pay that fee (which had to be paid up front in one lump sun)

House price rises have mostly been due to the near complete decimation of the housing construction market in recently years. About 10% of houses were completed compared to 10 years ago. There is very little supply and a pent up demand. Combine that with non-existant tenant protection, and a middle class who invested in property and want/need to see some improvement in their income.

In Cork, big pharma (Pfizer, GSK, Johnson&Johnson) & some tech, Apple, EMC, Vmware, Amazon, Redhat.

Hard to say why the sudden progressive turn in Irish politics. With the marriage equality referendum 1 in 3 voted against, so there is still 33% of the country that I can guarantee you would be very conservative. But yes, for what was once a deeply religious country there has been a seismic shift in culture.

GenX is the generation where the shift first happened. I have seen the following reasons. Television (I'm not kidding), low-cost travel (Ryanair), 3rd-level education, Church scandals, ...

Very hard to say why this political shift, frankly even though people in Ireland have been talking for years about the decriminalisation of cannabis (t the very least) and even though I felt it must happen some day I am still surprised. The supervised injection clinics is a great idea.

Describing the Dublin tech community as 'a small white male tech elite' is bizarre. Given the still tiny number of non-white people in Ireland, and the relative number in the tech industry, outside of the teaching hospitals the tech industry is probably the most ethnically diverse in the country. There's certainly a gender disparity, but given the relative ease of getting into tech (via Springboard and similar), this is likely a combination of legacy factors and relative lack of interest in STEM at university level. Sounds like you're importing a narrative from the US.

Agreed on the lack of progress in poverty, social inequality is growing - in part as a result of the concentration of growth in the tech industry, as well as the stagnation of public sector wages and the slow removal of hiring freezes.

I live in Dublin and work in the tech industry here, so I'm not importing any narratives from anywhere else. The tiny number of non-white people in Ireland is ~9% of the population, not too much lower than the UK.

There's also been a reasonable female uptake of STEM at third-level in recent years, in part due to deliberate initiatives to promote it. I get the anecdotal impression this may have translated into reducing imbalance in a few science/engineering-related fields (I could be wrong), but not really IT-related stuff seemingly.

Ok, accepting first generation immigrants from developing nations, whats the level of 3rd level educated non white people living in Ireland? I'd bet it compares unfavourably with the number of non-white people working in tech here, given the massive number of non-Irish tech workers.

Yeah, you are right there. The sufficiently-educated-plus-visa-holding population is probably going to be a bit less diverse than the wider general population alright.

Intel aren't in Dublin either (Leixlip + Limerick)

Leixlip's pretty much Dublin.

If anything there has been a net emigration of young people here in the past few years due to the global economic crisis. We have had multi-national technology companies in Ireland for a long time, so it's not that.

Ireland lived under the thumb of the church until the 80s. They dictated the morals of the nation, and when their corruption and hypocrisy was exposed it became OK to speak out against them without being ostracized. Condoms were legalized in 1978, without prescription in 1985. Homosexuality in 1993. Divorce in 1995. We transitioned from one of the most conservative countries in the West to one of the most liberal in a remarkably short time.

The gay marriage referendum was primarily seen as younger generation issues, but I was pleased to see that the older generations showed their support in the end - the general attitude was "It's not harming anyone, so why should I stand in their way".

Our government, however, would never be the first to make bold reforms in drug laws. We have the United States, Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain to thank for the progress made. Some former ministers responsible for drugs have come out in support of treating it as a health instead of a criminal issue AFTER they left office.

Anyways I think that this is just an election ploy for the youth vote. Here is what the current Taoiseach (prime minister) had to say about legalising cannabis on the Youtube Digital Debate Q&A at the last election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6k9sohbulg (the typical answer to a question was about a minute).

Unless you are Google size the tax laws don't really make any difference, even then you only need to have a company registered there, you don't need an office full of techies.

Dublin is good for tech companies as it's easy to do business and get investment, English is the main language, there is good internet [0], you can quickly get to central Europe (thanks Ryanair), and compared to London the cost of living is a lot lower. It's just a shame about the weather...

[0] Unless you are stuck in a building only served by Eircom.

Not to take away from either positive story - both are really fantastic - but I think they're both isolated events, with slightly different causes, and sadly don't really represent a paradigm shift.

The national recognition of gay marriage was a worldwide story largely because it was a popular vote. Other - perhaps more generally progressive - countries had already legislated for it without needing that public vote. We only needed it because our actual constitution is so outdated and regressive to begin with.

The drug decriminalisation is more surprising, and rather than being something representative of the current government (who are otherwise extremely conservative), it seems more to be the work of a single relatively maverick government minister. However, while he seems genuine in his attempt, there's a general election in the new year so it's likely a pre-election promise and not something that there's intent to deliver on in this term.

"extremely conservative"?

I would have to challenge that. Certainly on a global scale (versus US, UK, EU etc), the current government is not that extreme.

Irishman here - living in Canada nearly two years now.

It's not very sudden to be honest - changes like the Marriage Equality Act have been wanted by a lot of people for a long time.

The criminalisation of drug use clearly doesnt work the entire world over. In Ireland, especially Dublin, it's not unusual to see a heroin addict shooting up on public transport.

I honestly feel that Irish people are in general a fairly liberal bunch. It can't be emphasised enough how much the Catholic Church held the country back. I don't think non-Irish people will understand just how high esteem (read: fear) that we held the institution in.

All we need now is to remove religion (not necessarily the teachings but rather the role the Church plays) from the eductation system and we'll really be getting somewhere.

God is dead, paedophile priests, neighbouring cultural hegemons and cheap credit have killed him.

It's a nice idea, but I can see the UK leaning on them, hard, not to do this. I can see the arguments now:

- People will get the ferry to Ireland and bring them to the UK!

- Drug tourism! Amsterdam! Everybody hates Amsterdam! Look at how terrible everything is there!

- Think of the children!!

- It's not aligned with the UK's policy of increasing criminalisation!

- Think of what you'll do to your prison sector!

Hopefully Ireland will give their former (hell, ongoing) occupiers the finger should they dare raise a stink.

    > I can see the UK leaning on them

    > Hopefully Ireland will give their former (hell,
    > ongoing) occupiers the finger

I think you vastly over-estimate the importance of Ireland to the British government.

I take it you missed the bit where they fought a few dozen wars over the last century?

Oh, Imperial Britain had a war with Ireland? That must make Ireland special!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-inva...

Can you elaborate on how Amsterdam is terrible?

I recently spent a week day. (Partly on vacation, partly on business.)

I saw a country with great public transport, decent food, a vibrant arts scene, and while yes, the smell of weed was everywhere, people seemed way more laid back. No roving bands of drunk frat bros, no meth tweakers, and police who viewed their job as to increase the enjoyment of all citizens and visitors, rather than generate revenue for the township through fines.

If that's hell, well, call me a Satanist because I'm sold.

Amsterdam has high (for Europe) violent crime rates.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/30/new-yor...

> Amsterdam tops the list of homicide rates in Western Europe with 4.4 murders per 100,000 people, followed by Glasgow (3.3 per 100,000), Brussels (3 per 100,000) and Prague (2.7 per 100,000). With 0.0016% of people in London being murdered, the city ranks just ahead of Canada and Serbia's largest cities.

It's still a lovely place to be, but some people see the crime.

The Irish were one of the first to ban smoking in pubs too.

The word 'progressive' has been hijacked and used to suggest the existence of valid arguments prior to their serious examination. Time we junked it.

Of course the same game can be played by pointing out that progressive diseases inevitably lead to a fatal outcome.

No, it has not been hijacked - it has two meanings. See, for example, https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/learner/progre... or consult your favourite dictionary.

> However, while Mr O Ríordáin told The Irish Times that there was a “strong consensus that drugs across the board should be decriminalised,” he said it would be for Ireland’s next government to discuss.

Is probably the most important paragraph there. Election is in the new year - this is probably pre-canvass fluff. That does still indicate a belief that this is what voters want however, which is positive.

Wow, this is great. Thank gosh there are still sane people running somebody's government out there.

Very interesting news! I wouldn't have expected Ireland to be on this forefront. When I got to the paragraph below, I also couldn't help wondering which nation that was:

"His comments follow a leaked report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, appearing to call for a worldwide decriminalisation on 19 October. The report was reportedly withdrawn after at least one nation put pressure on the international body to bury the findings of Dr Monica Beg, chief of the HIV/AIDs section of the UNODC in Vienna."

Curious as to why you "wouldn't have expected Ireland to be on this forefront".

Not trying to sound accusatory - just genuinely curious on the perception.

Stuff like this (2014) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/ireland-woman-f...

Without doubt an issue that needs reform (which I believe is coming - there's a lot of campaigning around it).

Would be surprised if many people outside the country knew about this problem though. Of course, its possible I'm wrong which is the reason I asked in the first place.

Yeah, we're not any more progressive on that front at all.

There's plenty of pro-choice activism here, but sadly, I believe Ireland still a long way from a civilised, non-hypocritical policy on abortion.

I would love to be proven wrong about that.

This is a test as to whether we can downvote a post that we've replied to. Nothing in this post is relevant to the discussion at hand, and no criticism of DanBC's point is implied by my downvote. He volunteered for this experiment.

From an outsider perspective, I viewed Ireland as somewhat socially conservative. "Somewhat" meaning that while a significant proportion of the population has liberal/progressive views, I felt that segment was less than majority, therefore unable to swing the vote on issues like this.

They still criminalize abortion over there. I definitely had the perception it was a highly religious and conservative country.

Why is 'decrminalise' in quotes? Is it b/c it's only partially decriminalized, or is it crappy journalism?

Because they are quoting the minister, whose remarks form the only basis for the story. No legislation or formal rules have been published yet, so there's no objective basis for describing the proposal. The use of quotation marks is entirely appropriate and not crappy at all.

The crappy part is how the journal author tacked "for personal use" onto the title to make it sound like a move to condone hard drug use, when in fact the movement is just the opposite - to help addicts get clean instead of giving them criminal records. So it's crappy journalism, but for a different reason.

Not that the former is objectionable. We are all too willing to forgive hard drugs as long as you give them the proper branding, i.e. pharmaceuticals. And of course for good reason. I would go as far as to say that the decriminalization and widespread medical administering of say, ibogaine, would do far more to fight the war on drugs than the actual War on Drugs itself.

You might want to look into the operational realities for Dutch cannabis 'coffee shops'. I haven't lived there for ~15 years and don't know how it goes now, bu back then there would be multiple deliveries per day to a busy shop so as to stay compliant with the letter of the law about the (very generous) quantities that could be possessed at any given time. This is an important distinction since Ireland has no plans to decriminalize sale or distribution...

...but somehow I suspect that if this is what you had meant, you'd have said so the first time. I think you will be happier if you give up trying to parse headlines so closely, given that they're the literary equivalent of of candy.

More likely, "for personal use" means that they've intimated that only a small amount of marijuana will be forgiven in the decriminalization process.

We have the same caveat in Maryland, which decriminalizes "personal use amounts". "Personal use" in our case is "up to 10 grams" of marijuana, and anything above that would be considered "for distribution", which is still criminal, and of course still retains the full weight of law previously associated.

On top of that, it's worth pointing out the obvious -- decriminalization is not legalization -- it's still "against the law", and is punishable (in Maryland) by fines that raise progressively each time you're caught. Moreover, while the material good itself might be decriminalized, no such decriminalization applies to paraphernalia. To that end, 9 grams of marijuana are mere citations, but a trace amount of marijuana in a pipe is still a criminal offense.

well selling is illegal, so its not legal per se.

If they're being specific on 'profiting' then in theory dealers could 'donate' their stashes to addicts and write it off against the tax man :D

Every (afaik) country currently classifies distribution as that word is defined - giving drugs to a friend for free is just as illegal as selling them to a stranger for profit. Possibly treated more leniently, I don't know, but not legally different.

This headline is plain wrong. Ireland isn't about to do this. The news is that our drugs minister is talking about it in the media, and talking about the need for the next government to talk about it. A conversation has started, that's all.

The biggest misconception about drugs is that they were outlawed because of their dangers to society/health. You would be better off habitually using heroin rather then drinking or smoking tobacco

How are they skirting around the narcotics treaty[1]? So far as I understand, that treaty is a significant hurdle for most countries considering or implementing legalization. Are they just ignoring it?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...

Although I'm generally for legalising drugs, in the short term my concern is this is going just increase petty crime. As gearoidoc said in another comment:

> In Ireland, especially Dublin, it's not unusual to see a heroin addict shooting up on public transport.

I lived in Dublin city (2 and 1) a few years ago and it's not exactly the safest place. Even in the middle of the day, in the highstreet, I've seen fights between people. This is going to come across as "drugs are ok" and more people will get into them, which will lead to higher petty crime rates.

There is an election coming up. Maybe its smoke and mirrors

Especially smoke.

A small step to remove the fetters of intolerance. But if legalizing small amounts is good, then legalizing large amounts is better. Nobody has the right to limit my ability to take large amounts of drugs - that's my personal business.

Yes they do and no it isn't unless of course you're a hermit living in isolation. For anyone else it's virtually impossible to ensure you (let's go with your example) take all the consequences of your actions as you must if you go along with the dictum 'do as you like if it doesn't affect others'. As a society we curtail many freedoms. Necrophilia hurts no one so should it be legal? Suppose millions decide it's a desirable activity. Do we then decriminalize it?

BTW I wonder if Ireland is going to permit industrial production of the desired drugs? As I understand it, the 'small step' as you call it is akin to legalizing the possession of stolen goods.

Anyone remember the absurd projects to freeze parts of humanity in the 70s - to solve problems.

Are drugs not basically a freezing process? You age, yes, but you are out of society, out of the high consume, reproduce circle, into something that gets you nowhere and costs you nothing but lifetime while doing them.Actually a good problem solution, if controlled by the state.

Lucky for us, every parent on this planet will scream in protest on this statement and enforce a counter policy to extend behaviour control into adult-hood and guarantee offsprings offspring. Thus a Thrug-of-War ensues, called the war on drugs.

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