Meet Ireland's new health minister

If you're following the political situation in Ireland you will know there's a new coalition government in town.

The general election in February produced what was essentially a dead heat between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fein.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (who have never been in government together) were prepared to do almost anything to keep Sinn Fein out of government but even working together they didn't have enough seats to command a majority so after months of negotiation they roped in the Green Party.

A draft programme for government ('Our Shared Future') was agreed between the three parties and last week the new government took office.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin is the new Taoiseach. He replaces Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar for two years after which he will step down to be replaced by ... Leo Varadkar. Talk about musical chairs.

I don't need to remind you that as health minister in a previous Fianna Fáil government Micheál Martin was responsible for introducing the smoking ban.

Prior to the ban Martin was under a lot of pressure for failures within the health service and the smoking ban provided a nice distraction. Some say it even saved his career.

As it happens the new health minister Stephen Donnelly is arguably one of the more interesting appointments to the new cabinet.

Elected to parliament in 2011 as an independent, Donnelly then co-founded and became joint leader of the Social Democrats in 2015 but resigned in 2016 and joined Fianna Fáil a year later.

Three years on he's in government, which is some journey.

In 2017, before he joined Fianna Fáil, he told Hot Press, a music and politics magazine:

I’d like to find a way to decriminalise small quantities of weed. If a grown adult wants to grow a herb and then smoke it, and there are no negative consequences for other people, then they should be allowed to do that.

However, any such approach would have to be done in the context of medical research showing that smoking weed as a minor can lead to longer-term mental health challenges. It would also need to be done mindful of ‘drug tourism’ – a la Amsterdam – which is not something we want here.

Asked about other drugs he said:

I’ve mixed views. If you’re doing something that’s not harming anybody else, it’s hard to see a legitimate role for the State in prosecuting you for it. However, this ‘victimless world’ isn’t the reality with a lot of drugs, because there is crime, there is violence, there are health effects. So, it’s complicated.

So, you’re basically saying if an adult is caught in possession of coke they shouldn’t be arrested for it?

I’m saying that I’m very open to an evidence-based conversation about it, but the ‘victimless world’ likely doesn’t apply with coke.

Why not?

It’s an ugly drug. You don’t tend to see someone smoking a joint and then heading to Whelan’s to start a fight during a gig! But you do see young fellas coked up in bars, causing fights and intimidating people. I don’t think it’s as prevalent now, but certainly during the Boom you’d see it: guys who were clearly coked up and very aggressive. It was a very uncomfortable vibe.

Talk to any Garda who works in the city centre about the heads they deal with on coke. Add to that the social consequences in the producer countries, which are catastrophic, and the individual and social consequences in consumer countries: it’s highly addictive and destroys lives. Decriminalisation is unlikely to lead to better outcomes. Maybe Class A drugs need to be dealt with case-by-case.

But what about the Portuguese model?

If there are models that have decriminalised and that has led to sustained lower usage, then I’d be very open to studying them. What I’ve heard anecdotally is: it’s worked well in Portugal, drug-related crime is down, harmful use of recreational drugs is down. But I’ve never seen an official report on it.

What about injection centres?

I’m broadly supportive of them. I’d like to see us looking at addiction not as a criminal issue but as a healthcare issue. What are the causes of addiction? Poverty, lack of knowledge, hopelessness, stress, mental health – let’s deal with them. People in a good place in their life don’t tend to become addicted to drugs. If we address it as a healthcare issue then it stands to reason that you’d have clean, safe injection centres.

Whether these views translate to government and the post of health minister remains to be seen. (I have my doubts.)

The first challenge to his relatively liberal position on drugs may be his attitude to e-cigarettes and other 'nicotine-inhaling products'.

Here's what 'Our Shared Future', the draft programme for government, says on tobacco and nicotine:

• Increase the excise duty on tobacco in the years ahead to further discourage smoking.

• Bring in a targeted taxation regime to specifically discourage ‘vaping’ and e-cigarettes.

• Ban the sale of nicotine-inhaling products, including e-cigarettes, to people under 18 years, introduce a licensing system for the retail sale of nicotine-inhaling products and restrict the types of retailers who can sell these products.

• Curb the advertising of nicotine-inhaling products near schools, on public transport and in cinemas.

Asked to comment on these proposals, Forest's John Mallon told the digital news and analysis platform ECigIntelligence:

We support sensible policies that protect children but in terms of public health most of these proposals make no sense.

On current evidence it's clear that e-cigarettes are a far less risky alternative to smoking tobacco.

Taxing e-cigarettes with the specific aim of discouraging vaping is not only counter-intuitive in terms of personal health, it's the worst type of social engineering because it will disproportionately hurt the less well-off.

Banning the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18 is sensible but introducing a licensing system for the sale of nicotine-inhaling products and restricting the types of retailers who can sell them will simply reduce the availability of products that are used almost exclusively by ex-smokers and smokers who want to quit.

If future Irish governments have any sense they would encourage not discourage the use of an established risk reduction product.

Either way, adults have a right to make informed choices about smoking and vaping without being punished, discriminated against or socially ostracised.

Far from bringing the tobacco control industry closer to its ambition of a smoke-free Ireland by 2025, these policies could set the target back by several decades.

An edited version of these comments can found here (Ireland’s new government takes office with vaping regulations on the agenda), albeit behind a paywall.

There's also a comment from the Irish Vape Vendors Association (IVVA).

Meanwhile the fate of the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2019, which was introduced last year by Donnelly’s predecessor Simon Harris (Fine Gael) but is currently sitting on the shelf, is presumably in Donnelly's hands.

As I wrote here (Irish Government seeks to further restrict access to tobacco products):

The Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2019 will go to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Health in early 2020 when ‘experts’ will be invited to address the Committee in public session.

We have nominated Forest Ireland spokesman John Mallon who knows a thing or two about smoking and vaping having quit smoking (after 40 years) and switched to vaping two years ago.

The election scuppered that process so we await the next move. Last year Donnelly was said to be drafting his own Bill on the sale of e-cigarettes to children so perhaps that issue will now take precedence.

Meanwhile we will draw to his attention Forest's submission to the consultation on the Bill, which you can read in full here.