Drug Policy

Lord Rea Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, as the first speaker after the noble Baroness, I can do no better than say that I agree with practically everything that she said. I thank her not only for bringing this subject to your Lordships’ attention today but for the tireless work that she has done in looking at the international aspects of drug policy and in bringing together players who are not happy with the present policies. As she said, the 1971 Act, based on the 1961 UN convention, aims to reduce or eradicate drug use through legislation which treats drug users as offenders rather than as patients needing treatment and care. Many people, now joined by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, question the effectiveness of the war on drugs as currently waged, with most funds going into enforcement rather than the treatment of users. It has remarkably little effect.

At the risk of repeating several speeches I have made over the years in your Lordships’ House, I first became involved in the drug scene as a GP in a north London practice in an area where drug use was pretty rife. I practised in association with the UCH drug clinic, which had a methadone substitution programme. We found that drug abusers were very problematic patients and, despite the methadone substitution, we had several deaths from heroin overdoses due to the drugs having an unexpectedly high heroin content. Users were not satisfied with the methadone dose they were prescribed.

It is worth noting that, although heroin use has fallen among younger people in this country recently, death from heroin overdose continues at a high level. This occurs because the supply is totally unregulated, of completely unknown strength and in the hands of a criminal system. It became clear to me when I was in practice that most of the harm caused by drugs occurred because of the unknown purity and strength of the drugs. The need to regulate drug supply seems very clear since the current punitive approach is not reducing the levels of demand or of drug abuse. Regulating the supply of drugs needs to be in responsible hands, but this is not easy when the substances are prohibited.

I will leave that for the time being and go on to mention what we can perhaps do in the mean time to ameliorate or reduce the number of deaths. One thing is the use of needle exchange clinics, which greatly reduce the transmission of HIV. Luckily we have needle exchange clinics in this country. Not all countries do. I am glad to say that they continue to exist, as I am afraid they are still necessary. Another thing that can be done to reduce heroin deaths is to increase the use of naloxone, the opiate antagonist. Several drug clinics are now working with schemes to supply naloxone, with accompanying educational programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will perhaps amplify this when he speaks.

As the noble Baroness described, there is now some light on the horizon. The recent Home Office report on international comparators, which she described, has shown that less punitive policies can be more effective in controlling the effects of drug abuse. Like the noble Baroness, I hope that the Government can learn from the study of this document and start to move with the times.