If the two ministers in charge of Ireland’s drug policy are anything to go by, this new Government of ours is going to be a wild ride.
We’ve already gotten off to a great start with various Fianna Failers spending their entire first working week, in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health crisis, whinging about not getting a ministerial Mercedes’.
Lads, crying all over local radio because you didn’t get a junior ministry is not exactly a great look when so many ordinary working people are worried about unemployment, a sharp recession and paying the bills.
Micheal Martin didn’t so much get a honeymoon period as about enough time to have a cup of tea before his party started lobbing grenades at him.
So we all know where we stand now with this cobbled-together coalition, a Government which is united only in one policy and that’s to shaft the Taoiseach as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
You get the feeling this FF/FG/Green tricycle will not go down in our nation’s proud history as a byword for clarity, discipline and unity.
The new Health Minister Stephen Donnelly (who was an Independent and then left the party he co-founded to join Fianna Fail)
says he stands over past comments that he’d consider decriminalising cannabis.
Meanwhile, the Junior Minister for Drug Policy Frank Feighan stands over his comments that public officials and people in RTE are “snorting cocaine all over the place” and that cannabis is a gateway drug to the hard stuff.
Now, this is the same Frank Feighan who said a few years ago Ireland should rejoin the British commonwealth, an idea that, in fairness, you would need a whole lorry-load of mind-altering substances to get your head around.
So Ireland’s drug policy – which is not so much a policy as a blank space – is in the hands of two guys with, shall we say, differing views.
Mr Donnelly appears ready to talk to the experts and Mr Feighan is ready to talk to Joe Duffy about the non-stop cocaine and sex orgies in the RTE canteen.
No wonder everybody on Fair City always looks so shagged. Cannabis will be decriminalised in Ireland in the near future, it’ll happen because that’s the way things are moving across the world as Governments realise it makes sense in terms of public health, policing and even tax revenue.
In the meantime, the safely and supervised injection centres that were promised for our cities four years ago may take a bit longer to deliver.
So we can just step over the dirty needles and the over-dosing addicts while we wait for Stephen and Frank to get their act together.
The two lads, like the rest of the new Government, really do need to adopt a new policy right now, and that’s less talk – more work.
