This is a difficult topic to cover in five minutes but I will do my best. The danger of soft drugs to the young population has never been addressed effectively through Government policy. As a result, the abuse of soft drugs for recreational purposes is widespread.
I wish to highlight a few alarming facts. Ireland has the highest level of ecstasy abuse in the EU among 15 and 16 year olds. One in ten mid-teen Irish students uses ecstasy and almost one in five uses cannabis. Ireland has the highest drug related death rate of any country in Europe, a figure that continues to rise annually.
The problem is not confined to one sector of society. It does not matter from what address a child comes, all children will be exposed to recreational drugs. Perhaps what is most frightening is that experimentation with recreational drugs is now the norm for many teenagers. Despite recent large drug busts by the Garda, drugs, and recreational drugs in particular, are more freely available than ever.
Clearly we as legislators are failing our young if we do not change tack in this area as current measures are failing. The big question is what measures we can introduce to make a definite impact. We must continue with some of the current policies but also introduce some new measures. Targeting pubs and night-clubs to ensure owners take a responsible attitude towards recreational drugs is happening, helped by the introduction of the licensing legislation in 1997 which allows gardaí to search premises. This has resulted in many pub and club owners policing their own premises. Preventative education, primarily in schools, to raise awareness of the dangers of drugs must continue, but has been shown not to be a solution. I sometimes think that for young people, many of whom see themselves as invincible, the more dangerous a substance the more exciting it is to experiment with. Awareness campaigns have clearly not worked in terms of smoking and drinking.
We must attempt to change the image of drug use. We must make it "uncool" to use drugs by creating drug free role models, for example, through aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns. It seems strange to launch a marketing campaign against something which is illegal, but it must be done.
The key area to concentrate on is the relationship between law enforcement and recreational drug use. Currently gardaí are in a hopeless situation. If they come across a person using soft drugs they have little option but to merely give a warning. Gardaí will rarely go through the court process as this would further clog up the court and legal systems and irritate judges in many cases. They also know that many recreational drug users do not belong in prison. As a result many drug users have no real fear of being caught and so do not take the law seriously in this area. Gardaí need to be equipped with a system which is not over the top in terms of severity, but which will ensure they are taken seriously by young people who use recreational drugs. A fair way to do this is to establish a specially designated drugs court which has been promised by the Government. It should be run by drugs experts in coalition with the Judiciary. People should be sent to drugs courts to be assessed if found to be using recreational drugs. A properly trained panel of experts should decide if a penalty is required or if counselling or assistance is necessary, as in the case of severe addicts. A judge could be asked to pass a penalty – a fine, social work or in serious cases a prison sentence – if required. Depending on the type and level of drug abuse, the drugs court could give different rulings.
It is necessary to take a serious look at this area as it is currently being completely neglected. We have not targeted users, but rather have targeted suppliers, with some success. We must now directly target the many thousands of young people – 15 and 16 year olds and in some cases 11 and 12 year olds – who are taking ecstasy tablets and smoking cannabis to ensure the stress levels of parents who see their children experimenting with drugs they do not understand are reduced.