McDowell's crime cocktail another gimmick

• The major drug problem is alcohol abuse and most violent crime is associated with it

Thirty seven years ago, in 1968, Sean Flanagan, a former Mayo All-Ireland football player and then Minister for Health, established a working party on drug abuse. He appointed another sports personality, Karl Mullen, as chairman of the working party. Mullen had captained the Irish Triple Crown rugby team 20 years previously. Among the 16 people appointed to the working party was the brother of Mary Robinson, Adrian Bourke, who at the time was president of the Students' Representative Council at Trinity College.

The report said the origin of the "drug cult" lay with "post-war beatniks of California", who had "dropped out" of American establishment materialist culture. Members of the cult, it said, "tended to identify with under-privileged groups and were particularly close to the Negro jazz musicians, whose music they adopted". The drug sub-culture in Ireland, it said, considered themselves an "elite", "turned on", "liberated", "having insight" and part of a "brotherhood".

It noted that just two people were charged with drugs offences in 1965: a foreign national and a businessman, both for unauthorised possession of Indian hemp. There was just one prosecution in 1966 and none in 1967, but in 1968 there were 23 prosecutions. One of those charged in 1968 was a journalist who was prosecuted for the illicit importation of heroin, unauthorised possession of heroin and morphine and supplying morphine.

The report supported promised legislation by the Minister for Health in exercising additional "controls", but warned against the "undue interference with the freedom of the individual".

In the course of its brief 77-page document, it set out the arguments for and against the "legalising" of cannabis, but said "the legal and medical status of cannabis should be kept under review in the light of experience and research".

Rarely since has the issue of legalising cannabis or "illicit" drugs in general been addressed in an official report. Instead, in the intervening 37 years, a prohibitionist strategy has been pursued which has failed. In the late 1960s, drug misuse involved a tiny fraction of the population; now, a quarter of the population (in the 15 to 64 age group) have taken an illegal drug at some stage in their lives.

More significantly, after decades of a "war on drugs", focusing on the "supply" of drugs, the authoritative Drug Prevalence Survey 2002/2003 reports that, for all adults aged between 15 and 64, "the vast majority (79 per cent) said it was 'easy' or 'very easy' to obtain cannabis within a 24 hour period". And this is for the drug on which most Garda attention is focused.

One of the leading authorities on the misuse of drugs in Ireland, Desmond Corrigan of the School of Pharmacy at Trinity College, has written: "With approximately 95,000 alcohol dependents, 840,000 nicotine dependants and an estimated 22,000 at risk from tranquilliser dependence, it is difficult not to agree with the suggestion that most Irish people have more to fear from legal drugs and medicines than from illegal drugs" (page 18 of Facts About Drug Misuse in Ireland, published by the Health Promotion Unit in 2003).

In the same report he states: "The drug most often implicated in violent crime is alcohol. It is now widely accepted that alcohol has a direct effect on aggression in humans."

Desmond Corrigan also notes: "The most serious drug problem involves opiates (including heroin) and is largely associated with deprivation. Addressing this problem requires a comprehensive approach involving not only family and community factors but also broad socio-political influences, especially educational opportunities... There is a need to raise public awareness of the importance of deprivation as a predisposing factor for the most damaging forms of drug misuse."

In a report by a ministerial task force on the drugs issue chaired by Pat Rabbitte in 1996, it is noted: "There is a high correlation between the areas where the problem is most acute and the areas which have been designated, on the basis of objective criteria, as economically and socially disadvantaged." It reported the views expressed "unanimously" by the statutory and voluntary agencies that made submissions to the task force: "that (hard) drug misuse is closely associated with social and economic disadvantage, characterised by unemployment, poor living conditions, low educational attainment, high levels of family breakdown and a lack of recreational and other supports."

The crime phenomenon generally is inherently linked with hard drug abuse.

A study conducted by Paul O'Mahony of Trinity College in 2004 states: "A very substantial proportion of serious crime in Ireland – of the type that tends to be punished by imprisonment – is committed by male, opiate drug users. This may be as much as 40 per cent of all indictable crime in the country and more than 60 per cent of such crime in Dublin."

In recognition of the link between deprivation, hard drug abuse and criminality generally, the government instituted the RAPID programme in 2000 for the regeneration of disadvantaged areas in Dublin and around the country. The promised funding for this programme. However, this has not materialised and many of the areas concerned remain disadvantaged areas of hard drug abuse and of criminality. In his crime package serially unveiled since the summer of 2004, Michael McDowell makes no acknowledgement of these links and makes no provision to deal with disadvantage, the cause of such a high proportion of criminality, aside from sex crime.

Instead, the cocktail of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), increased powers to a police force, protracted detention provisions and the insistence on entirely drug free prisons is likely to worsen the problems. Granting powers to a police force whose credibility has been so undermined by revelations at the Morris Tribunal – and otherwise – is itself a problem. Inaugurating a new raft of criminality through ASBOs will give rise to further policing and penal difficulties, as well as social tensions – breach of ASBOs will be a new form of criminality. The insistence on making prisons entirely drug-free is certain to cause conflicts and also serious health problems, because prisons are unable to cope with the withdrawal problems that a total absence of drugs will cause. The measure is also likely to encourage prisoners to use heroin rather than, for instance, cannabis, which is more easily detectable in drug tests.

The scale of sex crime was disclosed in the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report of 2002. It revealed that one in five women and one in six men were subject to contact sexual abuse in childhood, with more than one in 20 of all women and one in 30 of all men having been raped while children.

It also disclosed that one in five women reported contact sexual abuse as adults, with more than six per cent of all women reporting having been raped. One in ten men also reported contact sexual abuse in adulthood and one in 100 reported having been raped as adults.

And yet no crime package down through the years has ever addressed this phenomenon. Michael McDowell's package nowhere mentions sex crime or in any way addresses it.

A significant aspect to the results of the Drug Prevalence Survey is the extent to which it shows that, whereas more than one in four have taken illicit drugs in their lifetime, only one in 25 took illicit drugs in the month previous to the survey. This suggests that drug addiction is a relatively insignificant problem, statistically. It also shows that cannabis is not addictive for the vast majority of consumers: 58 per cent of those who have taken cannabis have stopped taking it.

Heroin affects a very small proportion of the population and, as stated above, this is confined almost entirely to disadvantaged areas.

Desmond Corrigan writes: "Heroin has few physically damaging effects on the body apart from the obvious risk of overdose. Chronic opiate use is likely to result in constipation and loss of libido but it does not cause harm to the liver, heart or lungs. The major risk from heroin is from the infections associated with unhygienic practices when the drug is injected." It is thereby apparent that the problem with heroin is not just heroin itself but the combination of heroin with disadvantage.

The major drug of choice for the vast majority of Irish people is alcohol and, as reported, the drug that is most conducive to violence is alcohol. And yet, again, no measures are contemplated in the crime package to deal with problems arising from alcohol abuse.

A further significant aspect of the survey is the information on tobacco consumption. Although 62 per cent consumed tobacco at some stage in their lives, almost half of those consumers had not consumed tobacco over the month previous to the survey. It suggests that a programme of education and promotion on the harms associated with tobacco had a significant impact.

Additional reporting by Deirdre O'Regan

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