Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

I wish to briefly comment on the background of this. Senator Ruane is very strongly of the mind to decriminalise certain controlled drugs, and I just want to put on the record my views on this. When I occupied the position that the Minister occupies, there was quite a campaign in international magazines and the like to decriminalise, say, cannabis resin. There was a strong campaign that that should be done, and I had at that time misgivings about it. I wish to briefly put on the record what they were.
First, to decriminalise cannabis possession, for instance, when dealing with possession by a person over the age of 18 is all very well in theory, but the real question is, does it work out in practice? I do not believe that, if cannabis is available to persons over the age of 18 as a matter of choice, there is any practical way of keeping it away from kids aged 12 to 18. I do not think there is any practical way of doing that. Maybe people will disagree with me on that, but if you have a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old sitting on a bench in a park smoking a joint, there is no way that the Garda can effectively say it was criminal to allow the 16-year-old to have a pull on the joint but it was okay for a 19-year-old or 18-year-old to do it.
That was then, and what worries me is that, ever since then, there has been an accumulation of evidence to the effect that cannabis consumption is dangerous, particularly for young people. It produces psychosis in a considerable number of cases. It produces mental illness and has profound psychological effects on people who become regular users of it. I noted during my own college days that the chaps in my class in university who were regular, serious consumers did seem to be affected in their general day-to-day demeanour after a while. What has happened in the meantime is that the different types of cannabis have emerged. We cannot just say that cannabis resin is either harmless or non-harmless as a substance. There are very different types of cannabis with very different capacities to produce psychotropic effects and lasting side effects, one compared with another.
Senator Higgins has nobly raised the issue that Senator Ruane is anxious to have debated, but it seems to me that, first, I would like to see the report to which she refers to see whether I agree or disagree with it. I have not seen it. I have not seen how anybody proposes keeping adults, people aged 18 and upwards, free to use cannabis and yet keep it away from kids in their teens. We are now in the process of shifting the age for purchasing alcohol from 18 to 21 in a couple of years’ time in certain circumstances. Childhood does mean something and protecting children means something. It is all very well for people who like to smoke the odd joint to say they do not want a nanny state telling them what they should or should not do, but to decriminalise cannabis resin and its consumption is a step which is seriously potentially dangerous to young people. Cannabis can be consumed in various different ways but bearing in mind that a lot of it is done by smoking, it is also creating a circumstance in which kids are being encouraged to smoke at a time when the State's policy is to curtail smoking as a habit. There is the whole question of nicotine addiction added into it.
I wanted to put these views on the record. I do not agree that it would be sensible to remove paragraph (c) from the category of relevant articles, even though I accept the proposition put forward by Senator Higgins that it is quite possible that suspicion of being in possession of cannabis opens the door to searches, and that this is done more frequently to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. I accept that is not just a possibility but also in some cases a probability, but on the other hand, unless we are to walk away from the Misuse of Drugs Act regime in its entirety, even including the use of cannabis, it would make a nonsense of our State policy as it exists now and until it is changed to exclude controlled drugs from the definition of relevant article.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10