Youth Forum Deals with Crucial Issues of Drugs

Barry McColgan
National Organiser
Ógra Shinn Féin

A youth forum on drugs held in the Teacher's Club Dublin, at the weekend, sparked an interesting debate and dealt with many crucial issues relating to drugs and alcohol.

The youth forum which was organised by Ógra Shinn Féin as part of their NARC campaign brought together young republican activists from across Ireland who discussed and debated a way forward for our communities to overcome the plight of drugs.


The first part of the youth forum was a talk titled "Community fight back against drugs" which included contributions from Dublin Cllr Larry O'Toole, Aengus O'Snodaigh TD and Belfast community activist Daniel Jack. The talk was very interesting and insightful, giving a historical aspect to the drugs epidemic. It traced the progress of actions that had been taken by communities in attempting to tackle the hugely negative impact of drugs. The speakers and contributions from the floor highlighted the inaction of the state in dealing with the growth in drug abuse and also the need for ourselves to play a more pro active role in empowering communities to tackle the problem head on.

Following the public launch of a new short film "Drugs a Community Struggle, a very open and comradely debate on legalisation took place with 2 activists on either side of the debate.

The debate on whether legalisation could assist in tackling drug abuse, had Oisin Dolan and Christine McCauley speaking in favour of legalisation and Councillor Johnny McGibbon and Lee Casey speaking in opposition. Those in favour spoke about taking controlled drugs out of the hands of criminals and drug lords, and how legalisation would open up the issue more and allow society to have a proper debate on tackling drug abuse. They also pointed out that legalising drugs would bring more regulation to drugs and said that prohibition has never worked.

The opposition spoke about the defeatist attitude of legalisation, and said that rather than stifle drug abuse, it would actually add to it, making dangerous drugs more widely available and acceptable. It was also pointed out that as we live in such a globalised world, any move by Ireland to legalise drugs would have an impact on other countries.

Following a very lengthy and passionate debate with many comments and questions from the floor, the room was divided up into workshops.

The workshops focussed on how to tackle drug and alcohol abuse from a community perspective. While a paper will be completed taking from the plenary on the day, here are a number of interesting observations from the workshops.

It was noted that if we are to effectively deal with the plight of drugs, we need to empower our communities, and as such everyone was urged to join their local community group. Another contributor in a workshop pointed out that while Sinn Féin has an internal network for cumann, councillors, women and youth, no such network exists for republican community activists. It was felt that this would be a very useful tool in order to co-ordinate effective community projects and promote the community led socialism that we espouse.


The workshop also pointed out the need for proper debate on the issue of drugs to better inform ourselves and hoped that the youth forum could act as a springboard to ensuring further open discussion.

Many crucial issues and new ideas where, debated and discussed throughout the day, proving it to be a very useful event in promoting and progressing the NARC campaign.