Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I have not been able to be here for the whole debate. I had meetings earlier and I have others tonight. I thank my noble friend the Minister for the amount of information he has supplied. Indeed, I have not had enough hours in the day to read all the PDF attachments in my email inbox. I am sympathetic to one of the amendments; namely, that relating to children’s homes or places which hold vulnerable children, or whatever is the current correct terminology. Clause 6 creates an aggravated offence for selling drugs outside a school. It seems to me an anomaly if we do not include places which hold even more vulnerable children than those in schools.

I think that in Committee my noble friend said that one of the difficulties would be that everyone can see where a school is—there are big signs and lots of children—but that drug dealers might not know when they are selling drugs in the vicinity of a children’s home. I do not think that that will wash. The bad guys selling drugs know every potential outlet better than anyone else. They will know when there is a children’s home and a potential outlet nearby, and they will target it. I would like to hear from my noble friend the practical difficulties about including children’s homes or places which hold vulnerable children. It seems to me that they are even more important than ordinary schools.

For a few reasons, I am not so sympathetic on the point about prisoners. Drugs are a problem in prison but they should not be. There is no excuse for drugs being in prisons but certain excuses are used. We have, in my view, the ridiculous situation of completely free association. Wives and girlfriends can freely mingle with the prisoners, most of whom are male. They can hug, kiss and cuddle, and they have every opportunity to pass on drugs. I have never understood why we do not have a system where there is a glass screen between the visiting friends and relatives, and the prisoners, so that drugs cannot be so easily passed on.

In 1993, my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne went to the Home Office. He decided to crack down on drugs and introduced springer spaniel sniffer dogs to some prisons. Two things were immediately noticeable. First, as soon as the relatives saw the dogs, they had to return to their cars to deposit the goodies that they were about to take into the prison. Secondly, there was resistance from a large number of prison officers and governors about the policy. I apologise to that very trendy trade union, the Prison Officers Association, if I misquote it. However, I was told at the time by prison officers that, if you are looking after 700 men in prison, you have to reduce the tension level. The way to reduce the tension level then was to let them have illegal access to drink, drugs and pornography. That reduced the tension levels, they said. Therefore, I do not have much sympathy for prison governors who say that there is a problem with drugs in prisons and the Government should do something about it. They have it in their own hands to tightly control drugs in prisons. However, if the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is right that it is impossible to test for some of these psychoactive substances, we need to make sure that visiting relatives are not able to pass them on. I would be amazed if little sniffer dogs were unable to detect them. It may be difficult to do so with a blood test, but we now read in the press about sniffer dogs which can detect almost anything. Some dogs can detect whether you are about to have an epileptic fit and it should be possible to have a tighter control regime.

Finally, why stop at prisons? I consider nightclubs to be an even bigger problem. If we are to have an aggravated offence of selling drugs outside schools, what about an aggravated offence of selling them in nightclubs, or near nightclubs where young people hang out? Again, that is a large captive audience. Perhaps we should have an aggravated offence for people in positions of responsibility who commit this offence. A tiny minority of military officers or police officers may be tempted to commit this offence, but perhaps it could be an aggravated offence. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few areas where I would like to see an aggravated offence introduced, but it may be best to restrict it to schools, with the possible addition of children’s homes.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, whatever I may think about the general principle of the legislation, if we are to have it, I am sure it is right that there should be aggravated offences where the interests and protection of children are concerned. I support the extension of that principle to prisoners. I applaud my noble friends for tabling their amendments and other noble Lords for their amendments, and for supporting the various amendments in this group.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who is set fair to close down the whole country, as far as I can see, that I understand that one of the difficulties that prison governors now face is that it has become a not uncommon practice for family members to send letters to prisoners on paper which they have previously soaked in a psychoactive substance. When the prisoner receives the letter, the thing to do is to smoke it. Therefore, this is not as straightforward an issue, as the noble Lord, of course, with his experience, very well knows. However, these are good amendments and should be supported.

Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, as someone from the highlands of Scotland, I like to be cool as well, but I suspect that it is a slightly different interpretation.

I was not quick enough on my feet to ask this of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, before he sat down. I readily acknowledge his great practical expertise in these matters and I acknowledge my own ignorance. Is there a definition, in statute or in case law, of how much is a “small amount” of drugs for personal use? One needs to know how much a person could get away with by claiming, “This is just for my personal use, guv”. Or is it rather like the cross-channel ferries, where people can come back with 10,000 cases of cigarettes and lots of booze and claim that they are a heavy drinker and smoker, and possibly get away with it?

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, quote favourably from the Portuguese experiment, and there are some debatable results there. I would also refer them to the trendiest, most socialist and liberal country in the EU—Sweden. Sweden has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs and, admittedly, a big back-up self-harm programme behind it. Although one can quote Portugal favourably, one can also quote Sweden and its no-tolerance policy favourably. I hope that noble Lords have seen the reports from Sweden, as I have, and if I am wrong, I am happy to be reminded and amended later on.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, I too have been impressed and encouraged by the evidence emanating from Portugal. Just before I add a few words on the subject of Portugal, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that if he looks at the incidence of drug-related deaths in Sweden, he will find that they are exceptionally high. People are ignoring these draconian policies that the Swedes do indeed operate, but not with happy consequences. One of the reasons is that criminalisation and the panoply of very severe penalties in operation in Sweden deter people from seeking treatment and help. Personally, I think that that is ill advised.

The Portuguese took another route when they faced a real crisis of drug abuse at the beginning of the century. They consulted an expert panel, which recommended the depenalisation—I think that that is perhaps the term—of small amounts of drugs for personal use. Again I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that under the Portuguese legislation, those “small amounts” of each drug are very precisely defined, so it can be done in legislation. At the same time, they invested very significant resources in treatment, education, programmes of social reintegration and the disruption of supply. It was a coherent strategy that appears to have worked very successfully.

As an aspect of that strategy, dissuasion commissions were set up so that somebody apprehended in possession of an amount of a drug—a psychoactive substance—would have to go before the dissuasion commission. As the noble Baroness said, it consists of a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, a social worker and a lawyer; it is a fairly formidable panel to have to face. But if you are brought before that panel, you are not charged with a criminal offence. It does have power to impose administrative sanctions but its main focus is on getting people into treatment.

The central principle of the Portuguese legislation is that drug abuse is a health issue and not a criminal issue. I would suggest to the House that the results have been most impressive. Over five years, the number of people injecting drugs halved; drug-related deaths and new HIV infections more than halved; drug use among the 15 to 24 year-old age group fell; there was no rise in use in the older age groups; very importantly, the rates of continuing use, year-on-year use as opposed to occasional use, fell below the European average; and the numbers seeking treatment doubled, while the costs to the criminal justice system plummeted. All this is documented—there is plenty of evidence to tell us about the success of the Portuguese experiment, which has been going for 15 years. As the noble Baroness noted, the global financial crisis and the extraordinary pressure on the public finances of Portugal made it difficult to persist as fully as they would have wished with the education and treatment dimensions of the strategy. None the less, they have continued with the policy, and as she said, it has become accepted right across the political spectrum. I know that Home Office representatives have visited Portugal to learn at first hand from Dr Goulão and others about how it has worked. It is puzzling and disappointing that more lessons have not been taken on board.

Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, would create powers such that,

“a senior officer or a local authority may require the person to attend a drug treatment programme or drug awareness programme”.

“May require” is quite a prudent element in the drafting, only because—and I fully endorse the policy of encouraging people to go to such programmes and benefit from them—the scale of drug-taking is, sadly and very worryingly, large in this country. A survey of Cambridge students found that 63% had taken illicit drugs, half of them before they had reached the age of 16; 45% of them had bought drugs for their friends; and 14% said that they had at one time or another sold drugs for a profit. A survey in 2011 of people in management jobs in London found that one in 10 took illegal drugs at work or at social events associated with their work. Mostly, they used class A drugs—cocaine and ecstasy. Of course, the use of cocaine and other class A drugs can lead to serious addiction, illness and death, so we should congratulate those such as Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, one of the members of the noble Lord’s expert panel, who set up Club Drug Clinic at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital—and other such clinics have been established across the country—which is particularly focused on helping young professionals who become addicted in this kind of way. I am simply describing the scale of the challenge we face if we seek to make drug awareness and drug treatment programmes available universally to people found in possession of drugs. It is estimated that some 350,000 children in this country have a parent who is a drug addict. I understand that one-third to one-half of those entering prison are already problem drug users. In 2010, there were 2,182 drug-related deaths. So it is a colossal challenge whatever strategy is adopted. Helping more drug users find the healthcare treatment they need will be a challenge on a large scale.

This is not a new dilemma. Back in 1924, the Government of the day established the Rolleston committee. Its recommendation to the Government certainly was that penal elements of policy were important, but it also said that addiction should be treated primarily as a disease. I would suggest that the moral imperative is not to stigmatise or to punish but to help those who are sick. We must communicate facts accurately, precisely and honestly if young people are to respond constructively, seriously and respectfully to the policy and the legislation. In 2000, Lady Runciman and her colleagues said that,

“the most dangerous message of all is the message that all drugs are equally dangerous. When young people know from their own experience that part of the message is either exaggerated or untrue, there is a serious risk that they will discount all of the rest”.

One of the difficulties with this legislation is that it fails to discriminate between the harms at different levels of psychoactive substances. I understand the problem that, with the proliferation of psychoactive substances on such a scale and at such a pace, this is a very difficult thing to do, but it remains an important objective of policy.

When the previous Labour Government were being tough on the causes of crime and sought to get more people into treatment, they found that it was not plain sailing. The Home Office identified at one point 320,000 so-called problem drug users and invited them to undergo voluntary testing in the hope that it would offer a route away from the revolving door of crime and addiction and into treatment. If I remember aright, the Home Office reallocated a very large sum of money—some £600 million; it was a PES transfer, if that is the right terminology—from the Home Office to the Department of Health and the National Treatment Agency. The Drugs Act 2005 set up the drugs intervention programme, expanding the drugs treatment and testing orders and making it compulsory to test on arrest or when an ASBO is issued so that a defendant was offered the choice of treatment or jail.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I think it is going to be very difficult in practice to implement the kind of regime that the noble Lord and his cosignatories call for, but I share his view that it may well be of much more questionable benefit than the Government suppose to close down the existing head shops en masse. I suspect that they vary very much in terms of the responsibility with which they deal with their clients but am pretty sure that, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, there are head-shop proprietors and staff who take a responsible view of the risks that their clients may run and the desirability of ensuring that they do not come to harm. It is very difficult to know how to prevent anyone coming to harm, not least because it is very difficult to identify the exact nature of the substances sold, even for the head-shop importers and proprietors, and there is not the evidence to tell us about the long-term effects of the use of new psychoactive substances.

However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that there is a lesser danger in this than there is in consigning the users of new psychoactive substances to street dealers and to online sources based outside this country operated by people who have no scruples at all. The consultation process that the noble Lord has proposed would be problematic, because people in the neighbourhood of head shops tend not to like them and it would be very difficult to get local public assent to the licensing of head shops, but a responsible local authority ought to undertake that kind of exercise.

I was very interested to note that, in the briefing from the Local Government Association on this amendment that I think we have all received, it makes some very practical points:

“We would oppose councils being made responsible for licensing because of the difficulties in assessing if a product is of low overall risk. Unless there was a full scale testing and risk assessment regime in place covering health and other risks the safety of a product could not be guaranteed”.

It is absolutely right about that, which is one of the reasons why, on another amendment, I have argued for the provision of a network of testing facilities. We ought to aim at that. We should encourage responsible conduct by people who would seek to supply psychoactive substances to the market in this country. There is evidence that many people operating cannabis cafes in the Netherlands for example, particularly because they are under pretty close police and other supervision, take good care to ensure that the products that they offer are relatively safe and that they guide purchasers to buy the products that may be least dangerous and least unsuitable for them. One might even say, for those who favour the taking of cannabis, it is positively suitable for them—but I am neutral on that point. We have all the time to think practically and realistically and, in tabling this amendment, noble Lords are doing just that.

[Lord Blencathra]

I rise briefly in response to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, when he mentioned that the closure of the head shops in Ireland had resulted in the whole trade going underground. I am not sure whether my noble friend has had a chance to see it or research it, but my Google alert this morning said that some new report had been published by some doctors or professors in Ireland—maybe it was Dublin university, or something—that suggested that, quite the contrary, use of psychoactive substances overall had declined dramatically with the head shops ban and it had not gone underground, as people had feared. I have not had a chance to Google it and study it all but, if my noble friend is not aware of it, perhaps he and his assistants in his office can swot up on it. I am sure that it is a measure that will be addressed again at Report. We had a big debate last week on the situation in Ireland, so it would be worth while studying this academic research to see whether it is kosher.

Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I have no idea whether cannabis is relevant and effective in dealing with nausea or spasms caused by motor neurone disease or other diseases, but I have a wee bit of experience of multiple sclerosis, and I say to the House that I do not want to be used as an excuse to legalise cannabis, because it is not necessary for treating the spasms that come from multiple sclerosis; there is already a fairly large range of drugs on the market that deal with that.

The spasms are difficult to describe and usually happen at night. The main muscles of the body—the torso, the legs and the chest—just spasm, and it is difficult to get a bit of sleep when that happens. In my case, when it started getting bad, my consultant said, “In that case, we must give you a drug that will deal with the spasms”. At the top of the list is baclofen, which is dirt cheap and highly effective. The maximum prescribed dose is 50 milligrams. I take 10 milligrams in the morning and 20 milligrams at night and have had no more body spasms because of it.

Okay, I cannot speak for all multiple sclerosis sufferers. When I was a constituency Member of Parliament, I had constituents come to me who said that they wanted cannabis legalised so that they could deal with their MS. I said that there were clinical trials under way that resulted in the drug Sativex, but they were not so keen to take a pill; they wanted to smoke a joint because it made them feel better in many other ways. Well, it could, but I do not want people who wish to smoke cannabis to get high to use the excuse that it is essential for multiple sclerosis sufferers in order to remove their pain and spasms.

If baclofen does not work—it seems to work for about 95% of people—doctors usually try tizanidine: I will give the Minister the spellings later. Following that, going down the list, is gabapentin. It is not usually prescribed because the other two drugs are usually much more effective. At the bottom of the list is Sativex, which is the cannabis derivative. The problem here, as has been stated already, is that NICE reviewed it and concluded that it was not cost effective. Unfortunately, that is absolutely right, because it costs 10 times as much as baclofen, which I have in my pocket at this precise moment.

I therefore think that the solution is: patients should be prescribed baclofen. If that does not work, they can go on to tizanidine, and if that does not work they can try the next legal drug, gabapentin. If those three do not work, then people can be prescribed Sativex. I suggest that my noble friend the Minister should say to the Department of Health and NICE that in those priority corridors it should be permissible to use it throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Wales overruled NICE and has allowed Sativex to be prescribed. It is not prescribed, except by private prescription, in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I think that that is wrong. It should be allowed to be used by doctors but not as the first port of call.

There is merit in rejecting the amendment as far as multiple sclerosis is concerned. It may be beneficial for other illnesses when people suffer spasms but it is not necessary to deal with the problems that occur with multiple sclerosis. I wish to put my liberal credentials—or near liberal credentials—on the table. A part of me takes the view that if people want to smoke a cannabis joint and get high, okay, let them but do not expect the taxpayer to pick up the bill for the cancers and other illnesses they may get later. Similarly, a part of me thinks that if people want to eat themselves through gluttony into obesity and sit on their backsides, taking no exercise, let them, provided the NHS does not have to pay for that.

As the taxpayer has to pay for these things and for the dangers which smoking cannabis can cause, the taxpayer and the Government must be in a position to say, “No, I’m sorry. You’re not allowed to smoke that because there are alternatives that can deal with the alleged problem”.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

May I say how welcome it is to see the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm of Owlpen, on the Front Bench alongside her colleague from the Home Office? I hope that she will report this debate to her colleagues in the Department of Health. It is excellent that the two departments are represented on the Front Bench for this important debate.

The noble Lords, Lord Rea and Lord Ribeiro, spoke with all the authority of their medical expertise, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, spoke with the authority that comes from his own unfortunate experience. I follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Meacher, in commending to the Committee, and very much to the two departments represented on the Front Bench, the report just recently published under the auspices of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform by Professor Val Curran and Mr Frank Warburton, entitled Regulating Cannabis for Medical Use in the UK. Had they heard the presentation of this report by Professor Curran from University College London, they would have been persuaded that the arguments put forward are eminently reasonable.

She talked about the severe constraints applied to the progress of medical research by the Government of the United Kingdom’s persistence in listing cannabis in Schedule 1. She told us that it costs a minimum of some £5,000 to achieve the licence and to pay for the secure conditions to enable the pursuit of research into the medical properties and potential benefits of cannabis. That is a severe discouragement, particularly in the stringent climate of funding for academic research. She estimated that research on cannabis costs some 10 times as much as research on other drugs. It is a serious constraint, yet a significant body of evidence strongly suggests that cannabis-based medications can be beneficial for a whole series of conditions, many of which have been itemised by previous speakers.

The noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, drew attention to the tentative evidence that may be emerging of benefits in relation to post-traumatic stress disorder. That is certainly a pressing and important issue for us in this country, as well as in America. Professor Curran also told us that there are suggestions that cannabis could be beneficial in the treatment of schizophrenia. It would seem perverse in the extreme to continue to deny ourselves the opportunity effectively to pursue research on the medical benefits of cannabis when patients suffering from such a range of diseases could be assisted.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the definition of a psychoactive substance in the Bill does indeed seem to me rather vague. We should be grateful to both noble Baronesses who have so far spoken in this debate for pressing the Government to tighten the definition and to give us some clarification. It would be helpful if the Minister would explain to the House the basis upon which he was able to give us an assurance—I thought he gave it rather tentatively and with less than full confidence—at Second Reading, that if he were to send a bouquet of flowers for the gratification of Lady Bates, he would not be in breach of the law. I see that it is suggested that incense might be caught under the law. How can he be sure that all kinds of substances and activities that, on a common-sense view, people would regard as innocent may not in fact be caught?

I would also like clarification—if this is not leaping ahead too far—as to what is, in Schedule 1, a traditional herbal remedy. The term is terribly loose. I fancy that it is going to be quite difficult for police officers or courts to be very clear what the term “traditional” in a legally binding context means. How in practice does he foresee psychoactive substances are going to be identified? Will there have to be tests in court? That would seem to be expensive and disproportionate. Will there have to be a large number of placebo-based comparative scientific trials? Again, that would seem expensive, disproportionate and impractical. I think he owes it to us to clarify a little further than the drafting of the Bill does what he means by psychoactive substance.

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I would be interested in hearing the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. She seems to have a fairly good point—to me as an amateur anyway.

I wish to make my remarks mainly about Amendment 9. This may be heretical to noble and learned Lords and parliamentary draftsmen, but why can we not have the Government’s definition and the definition in Amendment 9? Definitions are going to be the big problem with this Bill—everybody recognises that—and I see no merit in brevity of definition if it makes for confusion. On the other hand, we do not want it to be tautological and we do not want too big a definition which is contradictory. I am sure that noble and learned Lords and parliamentary draftsmen will ensure that that does not happen. I ask the Minister to keep an open mind on this and be relaxed about extending the definition or picking up bits of Amendment 9 if it helps to bring more clarity, irrespective of the length of the definition.