Legal Highs

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. May I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) on introducing this important debate? He set out very effectively the nature of the problem, the size of the market, the number of deaths and the policy challenges.

The debate has been a rather rare one for this place. Many of us have learned a great deal about an issue we were not very familiar with—I was certainly pretty much unaware of it. Much like my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), I had the issue drawn to my attention at a meeting with a constituent. Richard Smith came to talk to me a couple of months ago about his son, who had started using legal highs. He talked about the disruption to his life, the cost to the family in terms of relationship breakdown, and the money his son was spending. He drew my attention to the fact that, in the early days, these products were readily available over the internet, and were also available on market stalls. However, like the hon. Member for Chesterfield, he pointed out that these products have become mainstream and are now drifting into the high street.

My constituent drew my attention to a shop in Leamington Spa, a leafy town in Warwickshire that is very pleasant. It is in the main high street—the Parade—with Laura Ashley and Austin Reed nearby. It is called Planet Bong and has an entry in the business improvement district company directory. It is described as

“a funky ethical Fairtrade store specialising in alternative…Fairtrade fashion…All influenced by Fairtrade practices”.

Yet that is where legal highs are readily and easily available. It shows how the issue has moved on.

My constituent also drew my attention to the way in which chemists who manufacture the product stay one step ahead of legislators. The Minister has I think described this as a “race with chemists”, and I am sure that he will discuss how society can start to win that race. After becoming aware of the situation their son was in, my constituents looked for support in the usual places. They went to the health service and looked at what was available through education. Much as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South found, support was lacking, absent or inadequate.

My constituent believes that much of the problem is that the people who use the products do not see themselves as victims in the way that the users of more conventional illegal drugs do. They are enjoying what they see as a recreational product and are often completely unaware of the dangers, or of deaths such as those we have heard about. They do not understand where use of the products may take them, and as a consequence they do not present themselves at more conventional drug treatment centres.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend concerned to hear that a constituent of mine who wrote to me on this issue said that it says on product labels, “not fit for human consumption”? No one seems to read that. People who are not users who go into the shop in Newton Abbot are horrified at the risk to their children.

[Mark Pawsey]

It is part of youth’s belief in its invincibility. People take those products, believing that because they are young, their bodies are resistant, and they can deal with those things without a massively detrimental effect. How wrong can they be?

Another issue is the use of the term “legal high”, and the conclusions that it leads people to. If something is legal, they think it will perhaps do them no harm. If it is legal, why should they not do it? What should prevent them? The long and the short of it is that my constituent, frustrated at the lack of support available to his son, and concerned about others who might be dragged into using those products, identified a gap. He answered the question “What can be done about it?” by doing something himself: he set up his own company offering education and harm reduction advice. He set up five programmes, the first of which is called Legal Highs Game Over. It is a national awareness and harm reduction campaign targeting social media. It has a YouTube video and Facebook page, it is on Twitter, and there are posters. It addresses exactly the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South made about where young people now get advice and information.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anne Marie Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Norman Baker]

I want to make progress, because a lot of points have been raised, then I will try to take one or two interventions.

I want to correct a point made by the hon. Member for Chesterfield. He said that the UK is the biggest market in the EU for these substances. I believe the shadow Minister said that as well. The advice I have received from officials is that the recently published preliminary results of the 2014 Eurobarometer study show that the UK was not the biggest market. There are three countries ahead of us: Ireland, interestingly; Spain; and France. It does not give me great satisfaction to say that we are fourth, but, for the record, that is what the latest survey shows.

[Anne Marie Morris]

My question concerns labelling. There might be mechanisms to deal with incorrect labelling, but if a label states, “Not fit for human consumption”, that is almost a “get out of jail” card. How will we deal with that?

[Norman Baker]

As I said, the expert panel is looking at a range of matters, including descriptions and how substances are promoted and sold. If they are wilfully misdescribed—if the label states “bath salts” and the substance is not bath salts—action can be taken. If the label states, “Not fit for human consumption”, that is no doubt accurate and therefore more difficult. I assure my hon. Friend that that is not the only way into the issue.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) referred in complimentary terms to the action of festival organisers. I want to say for the record that I wrote to festival organisers to ask them to take that action, so if he was implying that the Government was not taking action that would not be accurate. The festival organisers responded positively to the efforts that we made in writing to them. Indeed, my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), wrote last year—successfully—and they took action as a consequence of his letter. We are taking action where we can on those important fronts.

Border Force has enhanced its capability to detect those substances—the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness made a point about ports—coming into the country with the introduction of new portable FirstDefender devices.

I absolutely take the point made by Members about prevention and education. I have given a strong steer to the expert panel that it should consider very carefully what can be done on education and prevention. I look forward to the panel’s recommendations on that particular front. Even so, in the meantime, our prevention message, especially to young people, that the products cannot be assumed to be safe has been consistent and clear. Our FRANK website messaging continues to be updated with information on the risks, consequences and harms of those substances, using the best and latest available information and advice.

We have researched user trends to inform further work on reducing demand, including online. In summer 2013, the Home Office ran targeted communications activity over the festival period to help to prevent the use of those substances and to raise awareness of their risks and harms. That was aimed at particularly 15 to 18-year-olds. With the media involved, we think that more than half of that age group got the message that we sent out last year.

There were 74,000-plus unique visitors to the campaign page on our website, and we saw an 84% increase in website traffic as a consequence. A survey of visitors to the website showed that our social marketing campaign has been effective in shifting attitudes and that a new campaign could achieve similar results, so we are planning to run similar activity again this summer.

We have worked with the Department for Education and UK law enforcement on guidance issued to schools so that drug education includes those substances, along with other harmful drug use, but I want to see what more we can do on that front.