Despite what the dance music press might have you believe, drugs are much more divisive and controversial than they make out. Given Ears To The House understands a few of the main writers in the dance music world are users themselves, the fact their own view is the prevalent one in the music press is unsurprising.
Our view on this site is simple. We think people should ultimately make up their own minds on the matter – but they should do so with accurate and balanced information, knowing what could happen and what could go wrong if they do choose to take something. We also believe it’s something which cannot be stopped, no matter how draconian the authorities want to be.
So it’s with that in mind we discovered over the weekend that today is a National Day Of Action in the Republic of Ireland. Patients For Safe Access is a campaign group which wants to see the country legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes – and they’re planning on meeting up outside the government’s Department of Health in Dublin this afternoon at 2pm to make their case.
An Gardai Siochána – they’re the Irish police force – have a page on their site dedicated to this very subject, which points out “it is an offence to cultivate, import, export, produce, supply and possess cannabis… policy to date has not permitted the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal purposes and no licences have been issued for this activity”.
Indeed, we can only find one case in the country of someone getting a licence allowing treatment – and this was a then two-year old boy from Cork called Tristan Forde who “used to have up to 20 seizures a day” due to epilepsy, but no longer gets them “since he began taking cannabis oil”.
It’s a debate worth having – and it’s happened in other countries. Only yesterday, we covered a story from California – what we forgot to mention was that cannabis in the state has been legal for medicinal purposes since 1996. So this proposal isn’t entirely new…
