Dáil Today: Simon Harris comes out swinging at ‘recreational’ drug users after consulting with Gardaí

Dáil Today: Simon Harris comes out swinging at ‘recreational’ drug users after consulting with Gardaí from ireland

43 comments

  2. Sounds like his problem is with the dealers, not the users.

    If so, why not legalize/decriminalize?

    He said himself there’s a growing social acceptance, and as we’ve seen in the states that a “War on Drugs” is not winnable.

  5. Legalise cannabis for medical and rec use, legalise psychedelics for therapeutic use.

    How any first world country can’t see the benefits of this is beyond me.. cannabis has the potential to stop the opioid crisis in its tracks

  6. Ah ye the blame game, that’s what it’s all about.

    It’s not the government that have gotten policy wrong, it’s the citizen, they are to blame.

  8. How can you be so out of touch? Spouting shite about Coke and pills being the big catalyst for violence when you can be fucking guaranteed alcohol was involved in almost every one of those cases too.

    But sure we’ll overserve people in bars till they literally can’t stand then sling them out onto the street! Holy god!

    “we need to get real about this” oh yeah, what are ya gonna do Simon, make them more illegal, use more of the already extremely overstretched guarda resources to pick up someone with half a gram of come or a pill on them! Absolutely tone deaf!

  9. Classic blaming of the public for stale, failed government policy. The illicit drug trade’s lifeblood is political stances like this.

    It’s the height of irony having a go at “recreational” drug users using “coke” in a setting where people are recreationally taking alcohol. (Disclaimer: Not an advocate for coke whatsoever, but believe people can choose what they want to do to their own bodies).

    This isn’t about people using coke or weed or whatever. It’s about punishing people for making their own choices. If lining criminal pockets is suddenly a problem for the government, regulate it at a state level. If you don’t want to do that, then don’t criminalize users for not giving them a legal outlet and don’t be surprised that a Black Market will emerge to fill in the gaps.

    In a country as tax-loving as Ireland, there are some powerful undercurrents at play ensuring the status quo remains for as long as possible.

  10. What fucking decade is this? Empty, hypocritical bullshit. It’s ok for you to get into an altered state with our state approved alcohol, but you’re scum if you do the same with anything else.

  12. it’s totally all the people dancing on pills getting in fights on a Friday. Nothing to to with our cultural addiction to alcohol.

  13. He sounds like an absolute fanny. Why aren’t heineken and diageo having drive bys and shooting each other up? Their product is legal and regulated so they dont need to. Any person doing drugs would much rather no one came to any harm over it. But they have no say in the matter. Legalise it and you can even bring in fair trade standards, workers rights, the whole shebang.

  14. Im not quite sure what he is arguing here but legalize and tax the drugs and then it should prevent so much money funding crime and it will free up more garda resources.

  15. It’s the same With alcohol According to the who 55% of all domestic abuse cases involved alcohol How much money is wasted every weekend patching up drunk people how much Guard time is wasted Stopping drunk people acting the maggot

  17. Get real about it and adopt the portugese model then!

    A drug user is a drug user regardless of addiction level.
    They all contribute to lining the pockets of dealers, just decriminalise personal supply use and actually attack the dealers instead of attacking the little people as usual.

  18. If the entirety of the complaint is that it funds criminals then you can solve it over night by decriminalising it.

    No no no no no. We need the other solution, to a different problem, because that is everyone elses fault but we want to use this reasoning to push it through because its an actual valid argument(for a different solution but shush)

  19. If it were legal it would’nt be a crime, I’ve done a lot during my younger years and I’m of the opinion legalise weed and shrooms but not everything else. I would be 90% sure that violence and vandalism and crime would decrease.

  20. And just when it seems like there is a glimmer of sensibility within the powers that be we can rely on the government to come out with stupid statements undermining any evidence that suggests their current approach isn’t working

  21. “Direct correlation between popping a pill and violence and murder”

    Is he for fucking real? Literally couldn’t be further from the truth.

    So sick of this paternalistic, finger wagging moralism from these ignorant small minds who haven’t a clue of what they’re pontificating about.

  22. Exactly why it should be legalised taxed and controlled. Take it out of the hands of criminals. Educate our young. Put the profits into addiction and mental health services. It’s a no brainer.

  23. Right so if I buy my drugs off a dealer and say I have an addiction, then I get the softie voice about the whole thing. But if I buy my drugs and say it’s just recreational, I’m responsible for murder and assault. Do you think the gangs and what not have two different categories and split their crimes up accordingly, and only income from the recreational baggies fund criminal activities? Come off it Harris. I don’t partake in drugs and don’t condone the rampant use – but he’d never stand up and say people who have a pint directly cause murder. Shall we start arresting bartenders or off-licences for facilitating the ginormous amount of crime that comes from alcohol?

    From my own observations anyway, I’d argue many recreational users are simply functional addicts and manage to keep their shit relatively together. I know multiple people in good paying tech/pharma jobs who constantly do drugs and can’t go a week without – is that not simply an element of addiction? It’s like saying someone who can’t go a few days without gambling is just a recreational gambler because sure there’s an element of fun involved.

  24. I haven’t heard scare mongering and people blaming like this since the fucking 80’s. Simon Harris is a corrupt little fucking tool that’s always been in the pocket of Pharma.

    This shows he hasn’t a clue about the drugs topic. Legalisation, decriminalisation and taxation is the way forward centred around harm reduction and education.

    I also love the fact it’s ok for all these politicians to drive drunk or drink on the job and then stand in the Dail and try and argue against drugs.

    Cannabis last week was proven to be 114 times PESS HARMFUL than alcohol.

    I also wanted to add that he’s basically saying that ALL the damage alcohol and tobacco have caused is ok as long as we keep the safer drugs illegal and criminalise people for using them.

    Please tell me how using all our Garda resources for fucking checkpoints like it’s the start of covid is stopping any major crime? They catch about 30/40% of the product coming into the country making 0 difference. There’s countless gangs waiting to take the kinahins place.

  25. Buying clothes from affordable outlets supports what amounts to slave labour, should we all just walk around in the nip? It’s almost impossible not to contribute to violence and oppression in a capitalist society, why single out drugs?

  26. Piss off ya miserable sod.
    Legalised narcotics mean there is no need for an illicit market.
    Alcohol and Americas attempt at prohibition springs to mind.
    Once was lifted those crims had to find new avenues of income.

    Alcohol causes more damage than weed, coke or mdma put together id wager, and thats inclusive of violence perpetrated by criminal enterprise.
    Drunk driving, drunken violence and criminal damage etc etc.

  27. This man links coke and pills to violence , how about we talk about alcohol and the link to violence since it’s the no 1 link or psychoactive drugs and how they usually do the opposite never seen anyone after THC or psylicibin exhibit any violent behaviours.
    I don’t think most people who are for decriminalization are talking about mixed MDMA or Coke.

  28. If you say buying drugs off the streets lines the pockets of criminals, legalise it so we can buy them from safe and legal shops rather than criminals.

  30. Yeah the direct link between drug takers and violence and murder is the dealers.
    Let me graph this out

    Drug user – Dealer – violence and murder

    Let’s break the chain and cut out the middle man

    Only way is by decriminalisation and legalisation

    So govt can regulate the middle man

    You don’t see bar owners murdering people …..it’s the same industry

    Break the chain – Legalise

  31. When your aunt is absolutely plastered on Stephen’s Day sitting at the table destroying the bowl of crisps/nuts and banging on about shite that she hasn’t a clue about

  33. What a smooth brain clueless take from Mr Harris.

    I wonder what he’s trying to achieve here, frighten people into not doing drugs recreationally?

    People always have and always will take drugs, I’m not sure anything will change that. Surely the solution has to be legalisation of some sort? What exactly does blaming and guilting the general public achieve, apart from creating more disdain for the government?

  35. Simon harris is a clown.

    Dropped out of school and fell straight in politics with his families connections.
    Don’t believe me just Google it.

    “He initially studied Journalism and French, at the Dublin Institute of Technology, but dropped out in first year to pursue politics full-time.”

  37. *I wonder if alcohol links with any of those crimes?*

    I wonder if they didn’t force people to deal violent drug dealers to get the substance?

    *Another dumb fuck we have running the place*

  38. I see a lot of intelligent and single tracked folk shite on about harm increase with legalised drugs. Would they think there’s a slight chance that if cocaine wasn’t made using concrete and petrol that it could be a tiny bit safer to consume? Literally every single drug consumed becomes safer when it’s produced in a legal market and has some quality control.

  39. That direct line he references is there because of the illegality of drugs.nothing will change, drug use is as old as man himself. Why not create a direct line between the drug user and revenue/tax and do away with the illegal middleman!

  41. I could guarantee if statistics are actually looked at alcohol would be the drug of choice for most violent crime.

  42. So drug use is supporting criminals, wow I didn’t know that.

    Maybe just maybe the government could move to legalize some drugs, you know the types that people are often taking on a night out on a Friday and Saturday, back to work Monday to get through another week to do it all again the following weekend.

    I can only really see many positives with this.

    You can raise taxes on an unprecedented level (maybe) doing this and you can start to educate people more openly about drugs and drug use. You can have people going to a doctor or clinic or whatever the fuck way it’ll work and getting pharmaceutical grade drugs, which means clean, which means less chance of overdoses and less people going to ER rooms.

    If you took away ecstasy and cocaine just as two drugs you’d do a hell of a lot of damage to organized crime.

  43. How does this man have the respect of anyone in this country?!?
    His argument is literally “we shouldn’t decriminalize drug use because only criminals use drugs”
    Like what goes on this man’s head?!

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