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IN THE ANGELA Davis book, The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues, she states that “We fight the same battles over and over again. They are never won for eternity, but in the process of struggling together, in community, we learn how to glimpse new possibilities that otherwise never would have become apparent to us, and in the process we expand and enlarge our very notion of freedom.”
We are still in that difficult dialogue when it comes to drug policy. The structures in Ireland recognise recovery as part of the continuum of care, which includes harm reduction. Historically, the formation of Drug Task Forces has centred community-led approaches that acknowledge that harm is experienced differently across communities.
Ireland’s drug laws remain rooted in outdated frameworks inherited from colonial and imperial powers. For decades, the case for safer drug policy has been made by the communities most harmed and by those guided by evidence, not ideology. As the political discussion gains momentum, we must not lose sight of the clear evidence: a criminal justice approach to drug use has caused profound and lasting harm, and alongside this, harm reduction and recovery are key components to the continuum of care and are not in opposition to one another.
I am looking across the Atlantic at the vibrations and reverberations of all the progress we have made, as Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. take us backwards. In 2022, I wrote several pieces for the Journal on the relationship between the United States and the Misuse of Drugs Act, which has harmed us in Ireland since 1977.
We know, when looking back at the transcripts, Ireland introduced this legislation to adhere to United Nations obligations that were driven by a racist and classist agenda in the States. The reality of backsliding in the US and the choices we’re left with in terms of the policies we pursue and where we take our inspiration from, it is vital that we embed Human Rights in Ireland in how we do drug policy and how we treat people who use drugs. This means aligning the new National Drug Strategy with the evidence, Citizens Assembly and the Joint Oireachtas on Drug Use Interim report and final report to come this year.
The message has been continuous and clear: prohibition does not reduce drug use or addiction; in fact, criminalisation compounds the harms. You can’t police your way out of drug use, and let’s be real about the fact that while drug use happens in all types of communities, the accumulation of harm is deathly different.
The prisons (and graveyards) are full of people impacted by drug use driven by poverty, and the majority of people incarcerated are from underserved and underrepresented communities in Ireland. In 2024, the Independent chair of the Government’s own initiative, the Citizen Assembly on Drug Use, stated that its report and its recommendations represent the most comprehensive and widespread discussion on drug policy in the history of the State, which included 130 speakers and panellists, 250 hours of deliberations, and 800 public submissions. In Ireland, we are so close to doing the evidence-based thing, yet still so far. This is why now, more than ever, we can’t keep our eyes off the United States.
On July 24th 2025, Trump passed an Executive Order (EO) called “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets”. Under a section of the order titled “Redirecting Federal Resources Toward Effective Methods of Addressing Homelessness”, it states that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will ensure that grants for the prevention of substance use disorder do not fund “so-called ‘harm reduction’ or ‘safe consumption’ efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its intended harm”.
Under the section “Increasing Accountability and Safety in America’s Homelessness Programs”, the EO instructs the Housing Secretary to introduce conditional requirements to use substance abuse treatment for recipients of housing or homeless support with serious mental illnesses or addiction, effectively removing any or all agency for people who need support and housing in their rights around treatment.
We all know well in Ireland the slippery slope between such things as poverty, disability, mental health and institutionalisation. Making enforced treatment a condition of support is not human-rights compliant, nor is it underpinned by evidence or human rights.
Also, under this section, the Attorney General shall review whether Federal drug injection sites or safe consumption sites violate Federal law, and the Secretary of Housing shall review whether such recipients violate the terms of their funding programs. It outlines how the Housing Secretary, Attorney General, and RFK Jr. shall require providers of funded homeless services to collect health-related information from those who use their services to share this data with law enforcement in certain circumstances. We now see an effort on his behalf to use anyone affected by drug use as his pathway to that by calling for the sharing of information and data of unhoused people who use drugs or are experiencing mental health difficulties. As is America’s past, surveillance and punishment are at the core, not care for recovery.
Under the section “Fighting Vagrancy on America’s Streets”, it instructs the Attorney General, RFK Jr. and other Federal departments to prioritise grants according to criteria that includes that programmes “enforce prohibitions” on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, squatting and also implement policies to target unhoused people who have a mental illness, or are in the throes of addiction, that will move them into “treatment centres or other appropriate facilities”. The echoes of institutionalisation are again worrying here, and the setup of these facilities is utterly unclear, considering the massive cuts Trump has made to mental health supports.
This article (which tracks many ways in which the Trump administration is making the criminal justice system worse) and this one outline how, in contradiction to the idea in the EO that more resources might be made available for mental health care for those who are homeless, Trump has cancelled or revoked $11.4 billion in grants designed to address substance use disorder and mental health issues. He effectively shuttered the leading federal agency behind the Housing First model, which provided housing and services on a no-strings-attached basis and served as a first step in addressing homelessness. DOGE massively cut funding and staffing at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and Trump’s administration has proposed restructuring the organisation into a new agency that medical providers warn could jeopardise access to treatment and services.
On 29 January, Trump passed an EO called “Addressing Addiction through the Great American Recovery Initiative”. It describes addiction as “a chronic, treatable disease, with relapse rates similar to other chronic diseases”. It states that the “framework for addiction treatment should parallel that of other chronic diseases — utilising evidence-based care, scientific advancement, continuous support and community connect”. These orders use the term recovery (because who is against that) to veil the true intention, which is to dismantle harm reduction, reduce human rights and curtail funding to services that support people who use drugs, hiding it behind universally agreeable language.
In reality, this “Great American Recovery Initiative” is just another Great American effort to hurt people, an exercise that will cause some seriously vulnerable groups to lose vital services. The amount of funding for associated programmes announced alongside the “Initiative” claws back just 1% of the cuts that Trump has made elsewhere to mental health and addiction services. These programmes will also be introduced with the significant requirements listed above, which will deny some of the most marginalised people in American society their dignity and their basic human rights. Our own responses are not insulated from similar happenings here unless we embed human rights in the National Drug Strategy and all related regulations and legislation.
Championing and ensuring resourcing and advocacy at the national and local levels of that continuum is vitally important to avoid the pendulum swing between punishment and care, which risks leaving people behind and defunding crucial services, including the centralisation of service provision to state institutions or statutory bodies alone. Now more than ever is the time to avoid that pendulum swing.
What happens in America matters because today we still live under its pressures for prohibition, which cost thousands of lives here in Ireland in more ways than imprisonment and death.
Lynn Ruane is an independent senator.
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