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Ireland to change its drug law, cocaine and heroine to be decriminalised

by IBNS 04 Nov 2015, 10:53 am

Dublin, Nov 4 (IBNS) As part of their 'radical cultural shift', Ireland will be making changes in their drug law which will come into effect from next year, allowing its citizens to possess small amounts of drugs such as cocaine, cannabis and heroine for recreational use, media reports have said.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Ireland's Minister in charge of National Drug Strategy was quoted by the Irish Times as saying, "I am firmly of the view that there needs to be a cultural shift in how we regard substance misuse if we are to break this cycle and make a serious attempt to tackle drug and alcohol addiction."

The minister also said that the country is planning to open medically supervised injection rooms for the drug addicts.

"These are clinically controlled environments which aim to engage hard-to-reach populations," he said, while adding, "Research has shown that the use of supervised injecting centres is associated with self-reported reductions in injecting risk behaviours."

While the country is about to relax its rules for the drug addicts, the selling of drugs will still remain a crime, according to him.

"This will be a wider discussion under the next government but once people get their head around the argument, about what decriminalisation actually means, that policy won’t be about the drug but about the individual. Then regardless of the drug the individual needs an intervention and society will be saying, ‘the substance is illegal, but you are not a criminal for taking it’," he said.