JUDGES DON'T LIKE drugs.
Just so you know.
That seems obvious enough, but at least they can understand offences committed while somebody was drunk.
That’s not to say they’ll accept it, -they won’t- but they can understand it.
There’s probably a couple of reasons for that; they may drink themselves, or their friends might.
And anyway, alcohol is legal.
"Imagine that: it costs the taxpayer €1,000
to issue a summons for drugs worth perhaps, €10"
But judges have different views about drugs.
They don’t like them. I mean why would someone take drugs when they know the damage they cause to society?
That’s what they think, and it’s a good question.
But that assumes the person who took the drugs is rational.
And humans are not rational.
If we were we’d never even consider taking up cigarette smoking.
Yet I know quite a few lawyers and judges over the years who smoked.
I was one of them at one time.
Like I said, we are not rational, even when we think that we are.
As many judges say, ‘whether or not you believe that drugs should be legalised is irrelevant. They’re not’.
In one sense this might be regarded as wrong-headed; after all there isn’t much point prosecuting thousands of young people every year in courts across the country for possession of small quantities of drugs, overwhelmingly, cannabis.
This makes even more sense given the costs of bringing a summons to court.
A District Court judge once told me that every court summons amounted to as much as €1,000 in costs associated in applying for, processing and serving it. Imagine that: it costs the taxpayer €1,000 to issue a summons for drugs worth perhaps, €10.
From a purely economic efficiency argument, it doesn’t make much sense.
Legalising some drugs would mean that they would be available to be taxed, thereby eliminating the profits to drugs cartels.
After all, the State could raise important excise duty in the process, in the same way that they raise money from sale of alcohol and tobacco. This might be seen as an even more persuasive argument given the decline in tobacco sales, as more and more smokers abandon their bad habit and younger ones don’t bother to take it up in the first place.
Then again, there is another argument, and its equally persuasive.
If you legalise some drugs it might lead to a spike in drug use. Since politicians are required to sponsor legislation that would introduce these laws, re-election might be regarded as ‘problematic’. The majority of people who vote consistently are older people. Most people become more conservative, not less, as they age and conservative people are not known for their sympathy for liberal causes, like legalising drugs.
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THERE ISN'T MUCH job security in politics and sponsoring a presumably divisive issue like drug legalisation might shorten your career.
Then there’s the visible consequences of drug use in this country: thousands of people have died.
That’s thousands of families who have suffered the pain of losing a loved one.
Whole sections of our capital city have been destroyed by drug use.
According to an Irish Examiner article of 12 June 2024 “Ireland topped the EU table for drug deaths with more than four times the average number of fatalities”.
The European average number of drug deaths per million is 22.5.
Ireland’s is 97.
We’re number one.
And if that wasn’t bad enough things in Northern Ireland are no better. Deaths from drug use have more than doubled in the past ten years.
Northern Ireland is battling a benzodiazepine crisis right now.
During the Troubles people in Northern Ireland were prescribed benzodiazepines to help cope with living in a conflict zone.
Today Northern Ireland has the highest rate of deaths from drug use in the 18-35 age category in Europe.
The island of Ireland is in a virtual state of emergency.
"According to an Irish Examiner article “Ireland topped the EU table for drug deaths with more than four times the average number of fatalities”.
The European average number of drug deaths per million is 22.5.
Ireland’s is 97.
We’re number one"
BACK TO DRIVING and drugs.
There are quite a few drugs on the prohibited list, but the main ones are:
Cannabis,
Opiates (including morphine and codeine)
Cocaine
Methadone,
Amphetamines (including methamphetamine, ecstasy i.e. MDMA)
Benzodiazepines (including alprazolam and diazepam)
Not every drug is prohibited. So, if you take paracetamol or some other prescribed medication these are not regarded as “drugs” for the purposes of the roadside drug test.
That’s because these drugs (and many others) have generally not been found to impair driving. The ones listed above have.
While the majority of prescription drugs are just fine, care still needs to be taken with some drugs. For instance, methadone is prescribed by doctors. It’s mainly prescribed to people who are trying to get off heroin, a far more serious drug.
But driving while using methadone is illegal as it is a psychoactive (mind altering) drug. So even though it may have been legally prescribed, if you are tested while using morphine you will be arrested and very likely charged with drug driving.
Drug levels are very low.
Ask someone at the Medical Bureau of Road Safety and they will privately confide that the legal drug levels are low. In fact, they’re so low, they just about rule out the drug’s presence in your system due to passive inhalation.
A COMMON MISTAKE THAT people often make is to treat recreational drug use like alcohol. We all know that if we’ve had a drink the night before we shouldn’t attempt to drive the next morning. Generally, we wait until around lunchtime until we’re sure that enough time has passed since our last drink to have left our system.
A very large number of people who are arrested for drug driving -maybe the majority- have taken some recreational drugs on a Saturday night and decided to drive on a Sunday afternoon.
They treat drugs like alcohol.
They assume that by Sunday evening the drugs, like alcohol, will have left the system.
This is a huge error.
Drugs are very long-lasting and some of the less dangerous substances are especially so.
In general, cocaine, a very dangerous drug, will exit your system after 3 or 4 days after being consumed.
Cannabis, a far less dangerous drug, can stay in your system for 2-3 weeks after being consumed.
That means that you could be arrested today for something you consumed two weeks ago. And if you were convicted, you’d be disqualified from driving for 12 months.
That’s something the dealers don’t tell you.
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