Sir, - The lack of respect for adult autonomy across cultural, political and professional Ireland can be seen clearly in attitudes and laws regarding recreational drugs and sex. Why do we insist that we have a collective right to interfere in the activities of consenting adults who wish to take drugs or fornicate?
Mr Blunkett's decision in the UK to drop the prosecution of people found in possession of cannabis is a move in the right direction. Framing laws that make criminals out of drug users is a senseless official arrogance.
From the public health viewpoint, it is wise to spell out the risks of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, amphetamines including ecstasy, cocaine and derivatives, LSD and opioids including heroin and methadone. Using any of these is inadvisable. Propagandists often portray cannabis as essentially innocuous, but this is untrue. Cannabis may cause anxiety, panic, drooping eyelids, verbosity, hyperphagia, distortions of time, colour and shape in the short term. Fear, apprehension, irritability, dejection and hallucinations may also occur. Bronchitis and lung cancers are a problem when the drug is smoked. The effects on drivers mimic alcohol, so there is a legitimate public interest regarding road accidents.
Cannabis may have a therapeutic role in multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and disease, cancer, AIDS, arthritis and epilepsy, but the Canadian Medical Association considers the scientific data inconclusive at present. However, the efficacy of cannabis in multiple sclerosis and in the wasting disease of HIV/AIDS is being evaluated systematically in trials at present.
Each drug listed above, indeed, may shorten lives; but should the users be criminalised? In short - No!
To discourage consumption, public education of the true risks and effects should be routine. Facts, not scare tactics, should be listed. Drugs are licensed to protect the public. It is better to license some currently illicit drugs rather than have the uncontrolled random doses of, for example, ecstasy that currently plague city centres. It may very well be an effective risk reduction measure. Use of recreational drugs has always been part of the human experience. Criminalising users is brainless.
What about suppliers? Doctors and pharmacists are licensed suppliers of opiates. Injectable heroin should be added to the therapeutic armamentarium available. A recent Swiss trial has added to the data showing benefit from such a move. "The effective medical treatment of drug addiction inevitably clashes with its demonisation and with the criminalisation of the drug user" (Lancet, October 27th). Street suppliers should remain illegal in the interests of public health. I believe that personal drug use should not be listed as an offence in the statute book but supply should be regulated and criminalised in certain circumstances.
For commercial sex, the influence of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam forms the background, but it is reasonable to expect that the Enlightenment should have reached 21st century Ireland.
Why should the state interfere with the activities of consenting adults in private? It would be better to respect adult choice and to license and tax the commercial sex industry rather than to have women's names plastered all over tabloid newspapers and demonised. What good can come from naming clients who use such services? Families and relationships can be gratuitously wrecked.
Public health benefits accrue with licensed brothels. Risks of HIV, hepatitis and other disease transmission can be reduced. Abuse and exploitation of addict prostitutes and the poor by pimps should remain illegal. Will we ever grow up? - Yours, etc.,
Dr Bill Tormey, Glasnevin Avenue, Dublin 11.