Peter Reynolds

I was astonished to read the Taoiseach’s words as he “warns against cannabis being ‘glamorised’amid new legalising proposals”.  There is nothing ‘glamorous’ about the suffering of Irish people who need access to medicinal cannabis, nor about sensible harm reduction policies designed to tackle the illegal market.

I have spent the past seven years trying to work with the Department of Health and the HPRA on medicinal cannabis and the truth is there is systematic, organised opposition to any progress at all levels. The Medical Cannabis Access Programme is a policy designed to fail and current policy on illegal use supports the gangsters’ business model and actually makes cannabis more easily available to children.

In everything related to cannabis, Irish policy is failing extremely badly and ministers, officials, the HSE, all medical institutions refuse to engage with the industry, patient representative groups or scientific experts. Irish doctors are regressive and badly informed on the subject. The term ‘luddite’ applies exactly because the luddites sabotaged progress in the textile industry in the 19^th Century and this is exactly what the Irish medical establishment is doing today.

Ministers need to engage and get a grip of these policies because all they are doing at present is causing harm, both to patients who need access and to young people who are exploited by criminals.

Also, Ireland is missing out on very significant business and employment opportunities. In Europe, the market for medicinal cannabis and CBD will be worth over €20 billion within the next five years and Ireland is way behind every other country in the EU. I have represented several businesses ready and willing to invest millions of euros in Ireland and create hundreds of jobs in a strictly regulated system for producing our own medicinal cannabis but every offer is rejected without even any consideration.

There is a secretive cabal of senior Irish clinicians who lobby against cannabis. They use arguments about children smoking illicit, high-strength, street cannabis as a reason that very sick people shouldn’t be able to use it as medicine. In fact they say that cannabis isn’t a medicine when north of the border, across the sea in the Great Britain and throughout the EU, hundreds of thousands of people are prescribed cannabis by their doctors and gain great benefit from it.

It is the influence of this small group of doctors that has hobbled Ireland’s Medical Cannabis Access Programme (MCAP) which has fewer than a couple of dozen patients five years after it was announced. The power that these doctors wield is what has prevented the HSE from implementing any training or education on MCAP. It means that many of the country’s major healthcare institutions have banned clinicians from even discussing the subject – and remember, this is official government policy!

As seen in minutes disclosed under an FOI request, this cabal of clinicians has lobbied drugs minster Frank Feighan that anyone who lobbies him on cannabis must disclose it and yet they have failed to disclose their own activity. Even so, Minister Feighan refuses to meet anyone else who wants to put the other side of the argument.

Cannabis is not harmless. There is no medicine, nor any recreational drug that is. Most are far more harmful than cannabis. including common painkillers, alcohol and tobacco. While Irish psychiatrists can speak of nothing except the tiny risk of mental health problems (a non-existent risk in medical use), in the UK consultant psychiatrists are prescribing it for depression, anxiety, PTSD and other mental health disorders.

The misleading influence of these senior doctors is what makes cannabis a dirty word in the Department of Health, the HPRA and throughout government where ministers and officials just refuse to discuss the issue. The current review of MCAP is being conducted behind closed doors, in secret, without any opportunity for patients, representative groups, the industry or independent, scientific experts to contribute.

No, Taoiseach, there is nothing glamorous about anything to do with cannabis. Instead, in Ireland there is suffering, injustice, ignorance and evasion of an issue that affects thousands of people. Time to step up, firstly to support the very sensible, moderate bill to decriminalise small amounts of personal possession. Secondly, to put our health service to task to deal with medical access fairly, openly and based on the best evidence from around the world, not just the opinions of a small group of out-of-touch doctors who have nothing to say except ‘no’.