Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Temporary Class Drug) Order 2012

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

15:48

Moved By

[Lord Henley]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Temporary Class Drug) Order 2012.

Relevant documents: 44th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, this order was laid before Parliament on 3 April—that is, if it is to remain in force. The order was made on 29 March and came into force on 5 April 2012. It makes—I have to stress that this is one of those words that I find difficult to say—methoxetamine, and its simple derivatives, temporary class drugs under Section 2A(1) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 for up to 12 months.

The Government identified and monitored methoxetamine, through our drugs early-warning system, in 2011. In light of the available evidence, I referred methoxetamine to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for advice in relation to temporary control in March. I thank the advisory council profusely for the quality of its advice, which was provided within 15 working days, allowing a decision to be made within a matter of days rather than weeks as has previously been the case. It is the first time that the power to make such an order has been used since it became available to the Secretary of State on 15 November 2011. It was also the first time that we invoked our drugs early-warning system to this effect.

The Home Secretary was satisfied, in consideration of available evidence, that the ACMD’s initial advice that the conditions to make a temporary class drug order were met. Methoxetamine is a drug being misused, and much misuse is having sufficiently harmful effects to warrant temporary control. The ACMD likens the effects of methoxetamine toxicity to those of acute— class C—ketamine use, including hallucinations, catatonia and dissociative effects. It further indicates cardiovascular effects, agitation, hypertension and cerebellar features such as ataxia—unsteadiness on the feet—rarely seen with controlled drugs.

The order applies UK-wide to protect the public while the ACMD prepares full advice on methoxetamine. It enables enforcement action against traffickers and has already had an impact through self-regulation of the online trade. We know that at least 70 websites previously offering methoxetamine for sale—the number of which increased from 14 to 52 in early 2011—have ceased this activity.

The order also sends out a clear message to the public, especially young people, that methoxetamine is a harmful drug. Of course, we will continue to monitor data on the drug to measure the impact of the order through all available channels, and share this information with the ACMD.

I take this opportunity to bring to the Committee’s attention the recent publication of a cross-government action plan to tackle new psychoactive substances, as an annexe to the first review of our drugs strategy. We also published our response to the ACMD’s advice, which helped to inform the action plan, and the 2011 report of the Home Office’s forensic early-warning system, on the Home Office website, which I hope the noble Baroness will find easier to access in due course.

I commend the order to the Committee.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I will be very brief. This is clearly a sensible precaution. It is very necessary and I very much welcome it. In view of the very nasty and harmful effects of what is known of this drug—which I am not even going to try to pronounce—it is, if anything, overdue, and I think it is a splendid idea.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, again I thank the noble Lord for his explanation. We welcome and support the order. The purpose and the benefits are quite clear. I will not follow in his footsteps and try to pronounce it. I am told the street name is “mexxy”—MXE—and I will stick with that because it is far easier to pronounce.

I have a couple of concerns, not around the specific action taken here but about the process and time it takes to get to this point. Both Switzerland and Russia have already banned MXE. I have a slight concern over whether the processes in place are quick enough to respond to the changes that are made. I know that the Minister is aware of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which has a key role in detection and assessment of new drugs within the EU. There is a recognition that these “legal high” drugs require very rapid action across Europe.

Since the Government came to power, the EMCDDA has identified 90 new substances during 2010-11, but I am concerned that the Home Office early-warning system has only identified 11. I am not clear why there would be a discrepancy between the two. If the Minister was able to say something about that, it would be helpful. It may be that the processes that we employ here in the UK mean there are others in the pipeline—perhaps they are with the ACMD, I do not know.

It would also be useful to know when the Home Office became aware that MXE was a drug on which action should be taken. If the Minister can say anything about the work with the EMCDDA, that would be helpful. It seems quite clear that the EMCDDA is very much ahead of the game as to what is happening across Europe as a whole.

I was quite shocked when reading about this SI—and the Minister reiterated the point—by the easy availability of these drugs via the internet. That does not confine itself to national boundaries. Also, the number of internet stores selling MXE increased in a very short space of time. In January 2011 there were 14 online stores; by July, within six months, this had risen to 58 online stories selling MXE. Any delay in banning such drugs allows them to become established very quickly. How is it possible to monitor such internet sites? Is this the responsibility of SOCA, which is to become the National Crime Agency? How are these sites monitored to ensure that they do not take hold in the same way?

One of the things that the impact assessment said was that there was a risk that a minor chemical change in the drug could make a new drug that would then be legal and unaffected by the order being made today. Are the Government looking at this issue? If they are not, we could have a constant flow of temporary orders each time there is a minor chemical change in the drug.

Finally, the impact assessment and briefing notes from the Home Office highlighted the importance of education in drugs awareness. Young people hear about the drug, but think that it is a legal high and do not realise the quite devastating implications and consequences. At the moment, we have the Drug Education Forum, which brings together 30 high-profile, high-quality and knowledgeable organisations across the UK, including ACPO and the NSPCC. Unfortunately, the Department for Education has withdrawn the funding from this body. My colleague Diana Johnson, Member of Parliament and shadow Minister for the Home Office in the other place, has written to the noble Lord about this and I think that it would be helpful if the Government were able to look at this again. Clearly, by their own analysis, education is key to young people understanding the dangers of such drugs. It would be very sad to see good action in one part of the Government being undermined by action in another part that makes it more difficult to tackle this problem. We certainly support the order but would be grateful for responses to these questions.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I thank both my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I reiterate that this is the first time that we have used this new order. The point behind it is to act much more quickly than we ever could in the past when we see new drugs being developed. That is why we created this system, which allowed me to refer this at a relatively early stage to the ACMD, get its advice and then bring in this temporary order, which will remain in effect for a year while the ACMD does further work on deciding whether this is right or proper.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, will know from some of the questions that were put to my honourable friend in the debate in the Commons, there is this faint danger, particularly with the way these things are developing, that we are constantly chasing after new drugs as new things develop. That is particularly the case when, as she put it, you can have a very minor change in something that creates a new drug that is not covered. We therefore obviously have to consider whether some more generic approach might be more appropriate in the future.

16:00

As to education, it is my privilege and honour to chair an inter-ministerial group on drugs, which has representatives from a large number of departments. The Home Office chairs it but all the other departments come in. The Department for Education, along with others, has always been involved and we are grateful for that. We take its involvement very seriously and look at everything that it can do. We certainly recognise that the Drug Education Forum, which the noble Baroness referred to, has a very valuable role to play. Getting all Ministers together to work on this has had a very beneficial effect and will, I hope, lead to further thoughts about how we deal with these very difficult problems. Sometimes, some of them seem to be almost insoluble. Certainly, the Department for Education is fully committed to that process and Education Ministers come to that meeting, for which I am very grateful.

The noble Baroness seemed to imply that the temporary ban had not had much effect on sales on the internet. As far as we are aware, we have seen a reduction. The 70 or so websites that were offering MXE have now ceased selling the drugs. To put that into context, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the EMCDDA, reported that in the first half of 2011 some 52 websites were offering MXE for sale. So we are making progress. We want to see how this works. Obviously, we will want to see whether we can use this process in the future.

I assure the noble Baroness that the Government are doing as much as they can to tackle the much wider trade in legal highs, the new psychoactive substances or whatever they are called. “Legal highs” is a rather dangerous term to use. It could encourage some young people to think that if they are legal they must be okay and not a problem. We believe that tough enforcement should be a fundamental part of our NPS action plan. Action to restrict the drug supply, including illegal new psychoactive substances, is a priority for all law enforcement agencies. We certainly will work closely with SOCA, the United Kingdom Border Force and others on that matter. We will also make sure that the information getting out to individuals, particularly young people through FRANK, continues to be at the best possible level to make sure that they know that, even if these substances are referred to as “legal highs”, it does not mean that there are not serious dangers about them.

As I have said, this is the first order that we have brought in under this process. It obviously has all-party support and I hope that all parties agree that it will allow us to move much more quickly than we have in the past. Again, I offer my thanks and congratulations to the ACMD. The way in which it dealt with the initial processing in only 15 days after the first representations from us was very encouraging. We hope that it will continue to do that as and when we refer others in due course.

Motion agreed.