Cannabis

Debate between Lord Lilley and Dan Poulter

Monday 12th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who for many years and with great consistency has pursued his campaign on this front and, sadly, has not yet achieved his objective.

Some years ago, members of the press asked Front Benchers from both parties whether they had ever consumed cannabis. I found that I was one of the very few who had never done so then, and I have not since. That may be why I had a clear enough head, when looking at the evidence, to conclude that we need not just to decriminalise cannabis, but to legalise its sale and use.

I duly wrote a booklet—it is still the definitive work on the subject—called “Common Sense on Cannabis”, which is available, I suspect, from the Social Market Foundation or free on my website and in which I advocate legalisation. I still believe that that is the right policy and I shall explain why. I believe that not because I am an advocate of the use of cannabis. I abhor the stuff and, as I said, have never used it. I am not an advocate of it except for medical use, and I am sure that we could all agree that cannabis and its derivatives should be made available for medical use when it can bring the relief that the hon. Gentleman described and that many of us will have heard about from our postbags. Even Queen Victoria allegedly used cannabis to relieve menstrual pain. If it is a Victorian value, surely it can be made more widely available.

There are practical reasons for wanting to move to legalisation. First, attempts to prohibit the sale and use of cannabis have failed. It is readily available and widely used. Until recently—it may still be the case—there has been a higher level of usage in this country, where it is illegal, than in Holland, where it is legally available. Nearly 30% of citizens of this country have at some stage or other used cannabis and few of them had any difficulty in obtaining it, so those attempts have failed. The second point is that they have failed despite the fact that 80% of the effort in the so-called war on drugs goes on trying to prohibit the use of cannabis. If we provided some legal outlets for cannabis, that enforcement effort, the treatment effort and so on could be diverted to tackling hard drugs, which really do harm people, enslave people and, sometimes, kill people.

Thirdly, keeping on the statute books a law that is widely ignored and impossible to enforce undermines faith not just in that law, but in law and the legal system more generally. Finally, legalisation would deprive the criminal world of a large and lucrative market. As the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) pointed out, that is particularly important in Northern Ireland, where that market is exploited by gangs—well, by and large by the IRA and other paramilitaries, who are likely to use that resource for the most odious and nefarious reasons.

Those arguments have led many to conclude that we should decriminalise cannabis; we should no longer make it an offence to possess or to use the stuff, but supplying or selling it should remain illegal. That is de facto the situation in some parts of the country, but I believe that as a policy it would be a mistake, and let me explain why. One of the key reasons used by prohibition advocates is that cannabis is a gateway drug. They say that once people have tried a soft drug such as cannabis, it awakens a desire for stronger drugs and leads them on to cocaine and heroin, so they must stop going down the slippery slope. There is no evidence for that at all. The truth is that it is only the criminalisation of the supply of cannabis that makes it into a gateway drug. Because cannabis users can obtain it only from illegal sources, they are forced into contact with the illegal gangs that will try to persuade them to move on to hard drugs. Prohibition of cannabis drives soft drug users into the arms of hard drug pushers. Only by providing some legal outlets for cannabis can we break the contact between cannabis users and those pushing cocaine, crack and heroin. In my view, such legal outlets should not be numerous and we should ban active marketing, sales to minors and use of cannabis in a public place.

I invariably find that most arguments against legalising cannabis are based on the supposed health risks. I entirely accept that heavy and sustained use of cannabis can be harmful, but at the time of writing my pamphlet, I quoted the Lancet review of all the medical evidence on the use of cannabis, which said that

“on the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill-effect on health, and…decisions to ban or to legalise cannabis should be based on other considerations.”

I emphasise “moderate” and “little”. I am not saying that it has no effect or that heavy and sustained use is not harmful, but I specifically stated then that moderate and occasional use of cannabis has few ill effects on health. None the less, people constantly bring up the health arguments, and I notice that when they do, they always say, “Oh, there’s just been a study that counteracts all that went before.”

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

It is easy to quote studies, but the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which does not take a view on the criminality but takes a view on the medical evidence that is presented and gives people an option to make up their own mind, does point out that even moderate use in younger years can lead to increased risk of mental illness in later life.

[Mr Lilley]

My hon. Friend has not stated a specific study, but certainly that was not the view in the Lancet review of cannabis. I find that there is a searching around for evidence. It is policy-based evidence—evidence that has been looked for to justify a policy, rather than being found and leading to a policy. It is similar to the sort of thing we find in the global warming debate.