How Joe Duffy shut down head shops (and why all drugs were legalised for one weird day in 2015)

The Journal

6 hours ago

AFTER OVER 25 years in the Liveline hotseat, Joe Duffy, one of Ireland's most recognisable and influential voices on radio, will hang up his mic for the last time this afternoon.
From scandalising the nation
after the release of Normal People
, to
'51551 Wash yer hands'
, Joe has brought us countless iconic moments over the years. But younger readers may not recall Joe's instrumental role in Ireland
accidentally legalising ecstasy and ketamine for a day.
It was 10 March 2015, and thanks to a ruling from the Court of Appeal which deemed the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 unconstitutional, Ireland made international headlines for accidentally making drugs such as ecstacy, ketamine and meth legal for 24 hours.
Okay, okay, it wasn't fully Joe's doing, but the court decision arose from a series of events put in motion in large part thanks to Joe's relentless and passionate campaigning against Ireland's head shops.
Head shops began popping up at scale across Ireland in late 2009, selling potent drugs such as mephedrone and synthetic cannabinoids.
These drugs were not illegal under Irish legislation at the time.
At the time, young people in Ireland had become the biggest users of head shop drugs in Europe.
A protest against headshops outside Leinster House in March 2010.
Rollingnews.ie
Rollingnews.ie
Reflecting on that period this morning, Joe told RTÉ Radio 1′s Morning Ireland that he first came across a head shop while walking down Dublin's Talbot Street around Christmas 2009.
'I saw this queue at the shop, at a window like you see at a petrol station, and it was a head shop.
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'I hadn't a clue what a head shop was. I hadn't a clue, and I asked 'What are these guys selling?' And they were basically drugs they were selling. Let's be blunt.'
Joe went on to explain how he mentioned it on Liveline on his first day back after Christmas in January.
'We discovered within two days, there was over 100 head shops thriving in Ireland, thriving. And then people start ringing in about the effects of this. We didn't know what they were selling, unregulated. Unbelievable. Making massive, massive profits.'
Five months later, on 10 May 201o, Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Brian Cowen clamped down on the shops by declaring a list of over 100 psychoactive drugs to be controlled substances under the 1977 Misuse of Drugs Act.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen announcing the legislation. May, 2010.
Rollingnews.ie
Rollingnews.ie
It had an immediate effect. Gardaí raided head shops across the country and, within weeks, the number of head shops in Ireland fell from 102 to 36.
Joe put this down to the power of politics, but also to the power of people on Liveline, who brought the issue to the nation's attention.
The veteran broadcaster stuck with the story. In 2015, a caller, Paul Hodkinson, talked to Joe about the death of his brother Colm after he took magic mushrooms in 2005.
Joe said his campaign against head shops was the only thing he's done over the years with Liveline that brought real risk to him.
'I was physically threatened twice, once in an underground car park by a guy who obviously owned a head shop and was out a lot of money. And another [time] I was spat at on Gardiner Street by another head shop person.
'But that's my job, I was trying to be mediator. But on the head shop thing, I did get very passionate,' he admitted.
In the lead up to the government's clampdown, protests against new head shops were common, with some also held outside Dáil Éireann.
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'Now I couldn't go on any of the protests. But what I can say, there was a plan to open a head shop in Clontarf. Obviously, I couldn't go on that protest, but I painted every single placard that was used in that protest that day,' Joe recalled.
Despite the success of the Liveline campaign, not everyone recalls Joe's interventions on drugs policy fondly.
In 2010, calls to ban head shops were labelled as
'Joe Duffy-created hysteria'
by then Labour councillor Dermot Looney.
Protest outside Leinster House. March, 2010.
Rollingnews.ie
Rollingnews.ie
Others, like criminal justice lecturer at Maynooth University, Dr Cian Ó Concubhair, take the view that Joe contributed to a wave of 'moral panic' related to drug use in Ireland.
Despite these criticisms, research
carried out by Trinity College Dublin in 2020
suggests that the closure of Ireland's headshops led to a drop in drug-related emergency room admissions.
At the height of head shop activity in the first eight months of 2010, the rate of drug-related admissions were 9% higher than the same period in 2008.
Two years later, in 2012, admissions were over 30% lower, with the decline beginning in June 2010, the month after the government passed its legislation.
In Joe's own view, his campaign against head shops was
Liveline's 'best achievement'.
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