Bressie ‘taken out of context' on drugs

Bressie took to his blog yesterday to hit back at a tabloid headline which claimed he wanted to make drugs legal.

Excerpts were taken from his Hot Press interview with Stuart Clarke which he says were “taken out of context”.

While he does not “smoke cannabis or take any form of drugs”, he did suggest via his blog that the taxation of cannabis could be a possible stream of income to help pay off Ireland’s sovereign debt, as opposed to the Local Property Tax.

However, he did not call for the legalisation of any class A drugs.

Bressie said he believes by decriminalising cannabis and controlling its use, money would be taken out of the hands of the criminal gangs.

The Mullingar man said the tabloid article was simply “a controversial headline to grab people’s attention and sell newspapers”.

He also felt that Ireland has its “head in the sand” with regard to the commonplace use of legal drugs such as alcohol and nicotine, as well as a bigger addiction problem to prescription drugs.

“In general these issues are largely ignored by the government as the tax they yield from people’s purchase of these legal drugs highly contributes much required income into the Irish tax system to aid and run the nation.”