Ireland will incorporate advice from the Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use in a new five-year National Drugs Strategy aimed at prioritising health and recovery supports, early intervention, and national preparedness in response to the global drug market. This policy accompanies the Drug Related Intimidation & Violence Engagement (DRIVE) project, which found that drug-related violence and intimidation was ‘pervasive’ across all counties and communities in Ireland. A little under a month after the October 13th Waterford arson attack, which killed four in a family — Philip, Kim, Callum and Jayden English, and is suspected to have possible links to drug debt, the state must work to protect communities from drug-related violence.
Launching the strategy, Jennifer Murnane O’Conor TD (Minister of State for Public Health) said that it “marks an important step forward in Ireland’s health-led response to the harms of drug and alcohol use” and “puts prevention, early intervention and timely, compassionate support at its centre”.
The strategy received public consultation and recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use and the Joint Committee on Drug Use. There was strong support for a health-led approach, with 87 per cent of 320 respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with it. Budget 2027 provides €7 million to start implementing the strategy, alongside €1.5 million to expand existing drug initiatives.
While international advocacy groups such as Transform Drugs argue for decriminalisation of drug possession, the Dáil is split between support and reservation. In a video shared to the Fine Gael Facebook account, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris said that “snorting coke, popping pills and smoking joints has real-life consequences that we cannot forget. We are not planning to decriminalise the use of drugs that inflict misery, criminality and suffering on our communities.”
The initiative is a step towards helping individuals and communities harmed by drugs, and reducing the power held by drug-related organised crime groups. The Drug Policy Action Group says that strict criminal laws on drugs create more profitable black markets and an incentive to traffic drugs that are not regulated and are frequently diluted with other, often harmful, substances.
Neill Woods, a former undercover policeman who infiltrated organised crime groups in the UK between 1993 and 2007, said in a Vice documentary that stricter laws stimulate more violence, as the removal of one supplier results in a power vacuum that competing groups move to fill, often implementing violent tactics. He added that as an undercover police officer in the UK, he saw that police presence increased drug-related violence and intimidation. A policy paper from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) found that domestic and international analysis of criminal-justice attempts to reduce personal drug use ‘overwhelmingly concludes’ that criminalisation does not reduce drug use.
A comparison between two EU neighbours, Sweden and Portugal, supports claims that decriminalisation may lead to reduced harm in Ireland. Sweden’s “Anti-Drug Strategy” has a “no tolerance to drug abuse” policy. In recent years, it has become one of the highest gun death rates per capita of any European country, placing second in Europe after Albania. This is a jump from 2010, when it was ranked 14th. Organised crime groups also use hand grenades and bombs, with 129 detonations being registered in 2024. This violence is associated with illegal narcotics, including issues of debts, territories, low drug quality, and informants. Sweden also has one of the highest mortality rates for drug overdoses in Europe, with 81 cases per 1 million citizens in 2018, according to the European Drug Report. This number was nearly 4 times higher than the EU average. In the same year, Ireland was joint third highest in Europe with 72 per million.
Paradoxically, the use of drugs in Sweden is rising, and cannabis use is now higher in Sweden than it is in Portugal, which decriminalised the personal possession of all drugs in 2001 in response to its opioid epidemic, according to the advocacy group Transform Drugs.
In 2012, Sweden’s drug mortality rate was 30 times higher than Portugal’s. Portugal’s health-led approach combined with decriminalisation has meant that over three-quarters of people with opioid disorders in Portugal have sought treatment. It now has among the lowest drug overdose rates. While Portugal only decriminalised possession and not supply, meaning that organised crime groups may still profit, and the spike in Swedish gun violence cannot be definitively correlated to its strict drug laws, the comparison may support advocacy group claims of stricter laws contributing to violence.
Ireland, currently struggling with drug-related violence, could benefit from further research-based and health-led drug policies. The DRIVE Project recorded 1027 cases of drug-related intimidation among people engaged with addiction or family support services in the past two years.
Recent instances of drug-related violence have been extreme. The aforementioned arson attack shocked the country, yet it is not the only act of extreme drug-related violence to hurt communities. The Irish Independent uncovered that perpetrators have increasingly been using “disappearing” message and video platforms to share videos of torture and intimidation. An Garda Síochána said that “the impact of drug markets is felt most keenly at the local level, especially in disadvantaged areas”, and that innocent family and friends of indebted drug users are often targeted. The DRIVE project notes that DRI (drug-related intimidation) is underreported due to fear of reprisals, proximity to intimidators, stigma and limited awareness of supports.
Despite progress in the National Drug Strategy in a health-led response for people found in possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use for the first time, it is not yet a decriminalisation of drug possession. The ICCL has called for a repeal of section three of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, which would decriminalise the personal possession of drugs, saying that the State continues to prosecute large numbers of people who use drugs, which is “a contradictory policy failure that harms some of the most vulnerable people in Irish society”.
