Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use ran from April to October 2023 and provided the opportunity for an unprecedented in-depth discussion on the drugs situation in Ireland, reflecting all its complexities. Following consideration of the extensive body of evidence presented to them, the assembly members made 36 recommendations to Government. These address legislative, policy, and operational changes that the State should make to reduce the harmful impacts of illicit drugs.

The assembly’s final report was published in two volumes in January 2024.¹ It presents a comprehensive record of the assembly’s six meetings and their recommendations. The report is an invaluable resource for those interested in understanding the drugs situation in Ireland.

Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, which published its report in January 2024, is the first time that the topic of illegal drugs use has been considered by a deliberative forum of this type in any country. This article is a brief introduction to the concept of deliberative democracy and the ideas from which it developed.

Deliberative and aggregative democracy

Deliberative democracy is a political exercise in which deliberation is the defining feature, and so differs from aggregative democracy, which primarily involves the counting of votes. Citizens’ assemblies, citizen juries, mini-publics, or other mechanisms for deliberative democracy invariably focus on topics where there are sharp differences of opinion. Deliberative democracy does not seek to replace aggregative systems or become the only or even the main form of public policy formation. Accounts of the origins and development of deliberative democracy emphasise its equally important epistemic and normative aspects; reasons are weighed and their strength is determined through a political process that supports equal participation and produces a collective judgement on the matter being considered. The opportunities for deliberative input into policymaking are limited, but deliberative democracy can add a further level of legitimacy for policy decisions in that public justification for a position is built through reasoning among equals.