Last night’s TV debate concerning the effects of cannabis usage took the usual route. Everybody condemned it and said wasn’t it awful the way the country was now and that it was only going to get worse.

Hang on. Actually, the debate was somewhat different.

There were people debating the fact that cannabis was a drug that was in many ways like the drugs that are freely available (the demon drink and the fags). Cannabis might not be the gateway drug that some people like to say that it is. The legalisation of cannabis might not be the end of the world and there were some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the simple correlation that legalising cannabis will lead to Sodom and Gomorrah might not hold true.

Now, I am not going to claim expertise on this issue and I don’t have the time to go and research it right now (term is starting soon, so…..Aaaaargh), but I do intend on researching this issue.

Ming Flanagan, the elected representative in Roscommon seemed to be landing enough factual (I love facts) statements to make me think very seriously about his side of the argument. He didn’t deny a link between cannabis usage and mental health problems, but he pointed out to the opposition that there was a link between alcohol and mental health.

We all know prohibition of alcohol doesn’t work, don’t we? I mean, it doesn’t and I am against it.

And so, what do I think today?

Legalising a substance that causes damage needs to be given the most serious of consideration. The argument is that we are doing worse by not having it legalised.

What we need are facts and what we need are people that will not benefit from the decision either way collecting these facts and what we need as a serious study of outcomes elsewhere and a realistic appraisal of whether these outcomes elsewhere will translate in any way to similar outcomes here.

The benefit, I think is the reduction in crime rate related to drugs (this is something I have commented on before and it is a serious issue that prohibitionism has failed to eradicate) and the cost is the increased availability of cannabis.

Though, to be honest, there is no problem getting cannabis within an hour in any town in the country, even if you don’t directly know anybody selling it, you definitely know somebody that knows somebody.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.