Swing liability and cannabis
The Chair warned that the Harcourt Street swing matter was sub judice, and McDowell carefully continued without discussing merits. He then turned to cannabis, arguing small-possession prosecutions waste time but decriminalisation could harm young people because cannabis can induce psychosis.
I just want to say two things without commenting on the merits of the case. It would appear that 55 years after Belfast City Council unlocked the swings on Sundays, the proposition is being put in court that there should be supervisors for swings when adults are using them and that it is a matter of civil liability if there are not. It occurs to me that we live in a strange world when civil liability can exist in such circumstances. Perhaps we are only hearing a portion of the evidence. Who knows? It also occurs that if the Government is serious about driving down the claims culture, we cannot stand idly by when adults with two objects, one in each hand, lose their seat and fall off a swing and then claim that there should have been a supervisor looking after them, especially when it comes from somebody who has so much public influence and clear influence over Government policy in these matters.
As I understand it, the letter to The Irish Times to which Senator Ó Ríordáin referred merely points out that the case for medicinal cannabis is being confused with the case for decriminalisation of all cannabis by cannabis users.
Comment on this
That is a legitimate point to make and I do not believe there is anything disgusting or disgraceful about making it. This is not a simple issue. There is a big problem with criminalising the possession of small quantities of cannabis; it is probably a waste of everyone's time prosecuting people for it. However, decriminalising cannabis will have serious effects because it is a psychotic substance which causes psychosis among young people. I know this and science has proved it.
On a lighter note, marriage equality for homosexual people and the decriminalisation of cannabis came in at the same time in Canada recently. It was stated in a newspaper there that evangelists were completely shocked by this and that they were worried about the phrase in the bible that "if a man shall lie with another man as if his wife, he shall be stoned".