14 DAY TRIAL // A ruling issued by Ireland's Court of Appeal this past Tuesday made it legal for people living in the country to be in possession of crystal meth, ecstasy, magic mushrooms, ketamine and plenty of other drugs otherwise outside the law.
Mind you, Ireland's Court of Appeal did not knowingly and purposely legalize the possession of the aforementioned drugs. The entire affair was just a legal blunder. A pretty darn hilarious legal blunder, some might want to add.
How the heck did it happen?
The Court of Appeal ruling that sparked this conundrum merely pointed out that parts of Ireland's 1977 Misuse of Drugs Act were unconstitutional and not valid on the grounds that they had not been signed by both houses of the Irish parliament.
The parts of the 1977 Misuse of Drugs Act that were deemed invalid simply for not having the written approval of both houses of the country's parliament were amendments made by governments over the years and banning the possession of various drugs.
When the Court of Appeal declared these amendments unconstitutional and consequently invalid, it inadvertently made it legal for people to possess crystal meth, magic mushrooms, ecstasy, ketamine and whatever other drugs governments added to the 1977 Misuse of Drugs Act's list of banned substances.
When it was first issued in 1977, Ireland's Misuse of Drugs Act banned just 125 drugs, among which cocaine, cannabis and heroin. These remained illegal following the Court of Appeal's Tuesday ruling. The ones added to the list later, on the other hand, became legal.
Shortly after the news about this legal blunder started to spread, Ireland's Department of Health issued a statement saying that, although technically legal, the drugs accidentally condoned by the Court of Appeal were still an offense.
“There is always a degree of uncertainty about the outcome of court cases,” the Department of Health wrote in its statement concerning the ruling. “We are advised that sale and supply of psychoactive substances remains an offense under existing legislation,” it added.
Almost immediately after drugs like crystal meth and psychoactive mushrooms were accidentally made legal in Ireland, lawmakers moved to introduce emergency legislation to once again ban them. The emergency legislation should be introduced when this day is over.
The affair was started by just one man
Funnily enough, it appears that Ireland accidentally ended up legalizing a whole lot of drugs because of just one man by the name of Stanislav Bederev, who was arrested for possession of methylethcathinone quite a while back, in 2012.
The ban on methylethcathinone was included in Ireland's Misuse of Drugs Act in 2010, which means that, like all the other amendments added by governments since 1977 until present day, it was not signed off by the two parliament houses.
Desperate not to be sentenced to jail time, Stanislav Bederev pointed out this very simple fact to the country's Court of Appeal. Simply put, he claimed that the ban that landed him in police custody was unconstitutional. When the Court of Appeal agreed with him, all hell broke loose.
Thus, judges were forced to admit that, like methylethcathinone, all the drugs supposedly made illegal after 1977 were, technically speaking, very much legal. That's how Ireland found itself legalizing a whole lot of substances that should be illegal, albeit only temporarily.
