 Dan, rhai ddweud bod yn cydweithio gyda cynlluniaeth lleoedd yn sylwg oddi. Wrth gydweithio'n cynlluniaeth lleoedd yn yw meddwl a'r uwch undigol yn y cydweithio'n mynd? Rho. Rho, yn cydweithio, ni'n cydweithio ein cynlluniaeth lleoedd yn y cydweithio, yn y cydweithio a'r unigol fynd wedi chi o gymryd cyhoedd ac ar ôl ei cofnogi'n yn gweld â'r mae'r cerddwyd ddiwedd. Felly, we're all about having a sensible discussion, open and honest discussion on current drug laws and what their effects on society are. And then talking about new ideas that have been put forward by a lot of people and how they could benefit society. Okay, and tell us a bit about yourself, like what course you're doing, how did you end up getting involved? Well, I'm finishing up my PhD in physics at the minute. I'm doing a PhD in biomedical physics. Basically, I've seen students with sensible drug policy. I came across on Facebook somewhere, there's a branch in Galway in NYG. There's two branches in Cork and there's a branch in Atlone. And I stumbled across a post somewhere and I just noticed that there was no branch in Dublin, no university in Dublin. So I sent a message to one of the guys just saying like, what's the story? Is there anyone planning on putting together a branch in a Dublin University? I'm from DCU and they said there's another guy called Aaron Harper who contacted him from DCU who was also interested. So they put the two of us in contact. I'm between the two of us and the third guy, Martin Burns, we set up the society. So it's DCU's the first Dublin-based S&D. And what made you decide to run for a chair, like the main position? Yeah, I'm not sure. It was probably going to be myself or Aaron that were going to go for it and we discussed it amongst ourselves. And what we came up with was the fact that I've been around for a while. I'm a post grad now, I've been here for a good few years. And just I suppose maybe I like talking and I was going to say talking or something else, but I don't have a refrain from a bad language. But yeah, I just like talking and chatting to people and I feel like I'm at ease dealing with people like that. And I just really want to, I've felt quite passionate about it. I just wanted to be involved and with Aaron on board as well. It's great. Like the two of us, there's no arguing about it. There's no hierarchy king thing. It's just you're the person that comes and talks to the cameras and stuff like that. And what kind of students got involved? Were they people who were mainly in societies or were they people from particular courses? It was just a mixture of everyone. Yeah, we had a wide range of people getting involved actually. Yeah, we were when we were signing people up because we're a very new society. We actually, we weren't here for clubs and socks day or anything like that. So we just had a day ourselves in the hope of signing people up. And I think one of the most interesting things we noticed were people were just a bit kind of taken aback. They weren't expecting to see something like this. I think from my personal experience, a don't think DCU seems to be overly political or social like compared to some other universities. It seems like people were just a bit taken aback. They didn't know what we were about. But once we explained our situation, what we're actually trying to do, people, like no one telling us that, no one I spoke to seemed to disagree with us. They all were like, oh, that's, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Earlier this month, NYG voted yes. So if there was ever a referendum about canvas legalisation that their university would have that support, would this be something you'd be hoping to achieve in DCU? I think it's something that we're going to pursue because at students presentable drug policy, like when you look at the actual facts and the statistics, a system of legalisation and regulation definitely makes far more sense than the current system where you're leaving drugs in the hands of criminal gangs basically. And people are never going to stop taking drugs. If you preach abstinence, it doesn't stop people having teenage pregnancies. Just like abstinence doesn't stop people from taking drugs. So you have to take a logical approach. And in my opinion, and I would say in most of the people in SSDP, they think that legalisation of cannabis is the right way to go. Would you say you wouldn't condemn or condone any drugs? Any drug use? Any drug use. Exactly. We're saying that it makes sense to have it legalised. People can use drugs if they want. They cannot use drugs if they want. But the current system where it's illegal is very harmful to society. We're not telling people to use drugs or don't use drugs. We're just saying that there's the laws in place. And there'd probably be more health benefits if it was regulated as well. It'd have to come under certain standards. Of course, if you go into a pub and you decide I'm going to have a spirit, I'm going to have a beer, I'm going to have this, that and the other, you know what you're drinking. When someone buys weed off, they don't know the strength of it, they don't know what's in it, they don't know where it's come from. It's completely unregulated and it makes no sense. So can we expect any events from SSDP? Our main event coming up now is actually on next Thursday. So it's at the National Conference for Students with a Sense of Drug Policy. And we're very proud in DC that we're going to be hosting it. So we'll have the people from the chapters all around Ireland, from Galway, from Adlon, from Cork coming up to visit, as well as concerned citizens from all around Ireland. Anyone who's welcome to come along, it's going to be in the helix, upstairs in the helix in the gallery. And it starts at 4.30 on Thursday the 2nd of April and it runs until 8pm. So it's going to be a meet and greet to start with some different groups that are concerned about issues that we are. And then we're going to ask for speakers. Brilliant. And what would you have hoped to achieve by this time next year? I think by this time next year, if you would ask me personally, I would like to think that we will have had a referendum on whether or not DC Students Union would support legalisation of cannabis the same as the same as Galway. But more so than that, I would like to think that it's something that students in DC will be talking about day to day. I think one of the things we liked when we were handing out our flyers and just asked people if they wanted to sign up, even people that didn't want to sign up, we knew that they were kind of having a little chat with people and they'd walk off into the bar and see if they'd be talking to their friends. So then they were sitting there and they were going to talk about it and someone might say, yeah, you can't have drugs legalised. So then it'll be madness. And then their friend would be like, what do you mean madness? And just starting a debate, so then what's going to happen is people will become interested in it. And I think, because like I said, this time next year I won't be in DC anymore, the torch will be passed on to new people. We have a good few young people in our committee that should be there for a few years, but you're always in new people getting on board and people that are passionate. So that's what we want to have. And have you the support of the SU and the DC president or what kind of support do you have? Yeah, well, we got the support of the SU and that we applied to be a society and they seemed behind us. Like when we explained the situation, whenever you put the word drugs, people are like, oh, you're a society all about taking drugs and you want to do drugs, like that's absolutely not what we're about. We're just about getting the facts across. People educating themselves and knowing what's harmful, what's not harmful and being able to make decisions for themselves. So when we put that to the society, to the SU they seemed fully behind us, I haven't been talking to Brian about it. I must knock on his door and see if he gives us the odds here. But I'm sure he would. He's a smart guy. And just on a personal level, why do you think cannabis hasn't been legalised here in Ireland yet? On a personal level, I think it's very complicated. If you trace back why certain drugs are legal and illegal, it's a complicated system. Making drugs illegal is quite a new phenomenon. When I go back 100 years, there was no illegality of all these drugs. It didn't really exist. It was like people were using drugs, but it was small populations of people like, say, Central America, South America, those that are cannabis use stuff like that. It wasn't so widespread like, say, heroin use opiates and stuff like that that came from China and came from areas like that. But once it kind of went across the globe, it seems that certain governments kind of decided that, oh, this is bad for such and such a reason. We need to get rid of this. It's bringing in a bad element to our society. A certain amount of that might have been based on racism. A certain amount of it was based on fears for health. But basically, an awful lot of the decisions that were made weren't based on any sort of scientific or moral grounds. They were just a whim of someone who was in power. So what we want to do is we want people to look logically at the facts and then make a new decision. And if people want to become involved with the SSDP branch in D.C., where should they go or how should they do that? The easiest way is probably to find us on Facebook, D.C. Students for Sensible Drug Policy. You can also drop us an email on ssdpdcu.gmail.com. You can come down to the conference. Like I said, it's open to everyone. It's in the gallery, top floor to Helix, and chat to us. If you see me knocking around campus, just stop me and ask me a few questions. But basically, yeah, we want everyone to get involved. People kind of at any point of view, you don't have to go with the common view of thinking like, oh yeah, we should be legal and this should be that. Any of you at all, what we want is we want people who have an argument and they have a reason for their argument and that's what we just want to have when we have discussions. Okay, thank you very much Dan for joining us. Thank you for having me.