Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the new clause proposed in Amendment 11 follows very closely on the debate which we held just before the dinner break. In their proposals in this Bill the Government are setting a very complex and difficult task for police officers, customs officers and others. The definition of a psychoactive substance is quite deliberately broad and, some would say, vague. Powders and pills look much alike and the question is, how is an officer to know, first, if a substance is indeed a psychoactive one and, secondly, what is in the mind of the person in possession of that substance? How are they to determine the intention? That is essential in the establishment of whether or not a criminal offence is being committed. I would also be grateful if the Minister told us whether he envisages that there will be a de minimis level of psychoactivity and below that level, enforcement officers will not be worrying and will not seek to enforce the regime that the Bill creates. Or, are the Government saying that any substance which is at any level psychoactive is to be controlled, in the sense that this particular legislation will control it?
As we have also acknowledged in earlier debates, there is a shortage of forensic facilities in this country. That is why the Home Secretary belatedly, just before the Bill was tabled in Parliament, wrote to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to ask,
“how best we can establish a comprehensive scientific approach for determining psychoactivity for evidential purposes”.
That suggests that the Home Secretary is rushing into enacting legislation before she has any clear idea as to how it would work. What we know is that significant additional burdens will be laid upon police whose numbers and resources have been diminishing and may well continue to do so. These measures, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has already put to the House, may further inhibit research in important respects and create multiple new possibilities for the criminalisation of people who are in some way involved with new psychoactive substances.
I propose that the Government owe it to consumers, businesses, research institutions and those responsible for enforcement to explain exactly what they intend, and to advise them all on how this legislation would work. The Minister kindly undertook to write to us, the Peers who have been involved in consideration of this Bill, between Committee and Report. I suggest that in due course the Government should write to a much wider range of readers—people who will have responsibilities created under this legislation, who will need to understand the definition of and the practicalities of identifying a psychoactive substance, and what is in the minds of people they apprehend who may be contemplating purposes that the Government wish to discourage and would make a criminal offence. That is the burden of the new clause proposed in Amendment 11. The Secretary of State must issue guidance before this Bill comes into force and keep it regularly updated thereafter as to how users, enforcement authorities and others can identify individual psychoactive substances, the degree of their psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms.
I now move to the new clause proposed in Amendment 12, in the same group. If people are to look after themselves and others—their children, friends and people whose interests they care about—they are going to need full and reliable information about psychoactive substances. We have heard much about how the internet can be a force for bad, but it can also be a force for good in its ability to disseminate information that may be extremely valuable and helpful in enabling people’s safety to be preserved. It is the Government’s responsibility to use the means at their disposal to provide the fullest information they can. The previous Government, I think, relaunched the FRANK website, the earlier version of which was considerably criticised, but I praise them for doing this because it is a genuine effort to provide fairly full and certainly honest information about psychoactive substances.
The difficulty about the Talk to FRANK website is that its official provenance and rather starchy tone mean that it will not be the go-to website for young people who want to find out about drugs. While it is important that the Government maintain a website of this kind and amplify the information that it provides, they should recognise that the work they do in preparing and maintaining such a website is complementary to other, unofficial sites that are created and maintained by experienced people, whose motive is good, because they want to share information about the realities of psychoactive substances and protect people from coming to harm by their use of such substances. I have in mind websites created by organisations such as DrugScope, Bluelight, Urban75, SafeOrScam and PillReports, which are examples of some of the websites to which people can go to learn about psychoactive substances. Those websites are maintained with very good intentions with regard to the public good—public safety and health—and I therefore hope that the Government see their work as complementary.
At all events, we need to capture as much evidence as we can about the substances, so that we better understand the harms we are trying to prevent, the ills we need to cure and the effectiveness of the measures taken to prevent people coming to harm, and to remedy— so far as is possible—the harms that people experience. We should learn as much as we can from collaboration with other countries; the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction is an excellent model of international information sharing and co-operation. However, we cannot expect the people of this country habitually to turn to the website of the EMCDDA; they need to have something that is designed for them, and more appropriate and accessible for them.
My second proposal, in subsection (b) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 12, is that the Secretary of State should provide,
“a network of testing centres, readily accessible at no charge to users and others, at which they can be informed about the identity, composition, toxicity and potential harms to human health of any substances brought in by them which there is reason to think may be psychoactive”.
As I understand it, that service is available in the Netherlands. It appears that they have a fuller range of forensic resources and facilities for the identification and testing of substances, and that access to those facilities is freely available to the public at large as well as to officials and enforcement authorities. We should seek to construct such a model in this country, not least because an early alert to a bad consignment of drugs, which is very dangerous, could save lives. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on both those amendments. We talked a lot about legislation earlier on today, but we know, both internationally and from the Home Affairs Select Committee and others, that legislation does not make very much difference at all to the key issues relating to drugs, whether traditional drugs or new psychoactive substances. The important job the Government have concerns information. I have said it before and will say it again: young people do not want to kill themselves, believe it or not, and they do not even want to harm themselves and finish up in hospital. Why do they kill themselves and finish up in hospital? Because they do not have the information they need to keep themselves safe. Why do they not have the information? Because far too many substances are banned in a rather simplistic way. Countries such as the Netherlands, which have coffee shops where people can get cannabis, have very little problem with heroin, for example. There are other ways of keeping people safe. But the most important way, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, says, is information. I agree with his ideas about how this should be done—it cannot be typical government information. It really is important. If we stopped focusing on legislation quite so much and focused on some of these other issues, we might actually make some progress.
I want also to support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in relation to the testing centres. Testing centres would be a very important adjunct if we were to have a more proportionate system where low-harm substances would be regulated, labelled and so on, as recommended by the European Commission and approved by the European Parliament. If we had a proportionate system like that, and had testing centres, a young person could go into a testing centre and ask whether a substance was low harm and okay to take. With a combination of a proportionate legal system, testing centres and really good information, we would begin to have a really good drugs policy. Would that not be wonderful? We could lead the world with such a policy.
Many Latin American countries talk about these things. They know just how bad the war on drugs can be. They know just how important it is for the demand end of the drugs market to be managed effectively in order to save them from tens of thousands of deaths a year, corruption, government failure and all the rest of it. It is absolutely disastrous across the Atlantic. In my view, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our young people but also to Latin America and central American countries.
I very strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. I really hope that Ministers will take it very seriously and somehow link it with a proportionate, rational system of drug control.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I support these amendments. However, I have some concerns. The first is, as has been previously mentioned, the limited forensic capacity that the Government and police have. Already the police service has to make rationing decisions as to which cases it refers to forensic laboratories. This Bill could create a massive increase in the amount of work that forensic laboratories would have to do.
Before we had new psychoactive substances and this Bill, the idea of websites that advised what was a safe dose of an illegal drug seemed somewhat contradictory, and there would have been some fairly stiff arguments against providing testing stations for drugs that are illegal to possess. However, as noble Lords will know, this Bill does not criminalise possession, and therefore does not make it illegal to take these substances. Therefore, the case for public information about safe dosage and having testing centres appears absolutely necessary if the Government are to continue to pursue this idea that simple possession for personal consumption of new psychoactive substances should remain legal.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for his explanation on these amendments. Before I start, I was very rude earlier when I did not thank him for the kind words he said at the beginning of this debate and I feel very honoured to be taking part. I agree that a joined-up approach in departments is a very useful point. Also, I feel extremely privileged to be able to learn from my noble friend Lord Bates about how these things are conducted. The noble Lord has asked that, before this Act comes into force, the Home Secretary must issue guidance on how users, enforcement authorities and others can identify individual psychoactive substances, the degree of the psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms.
I can certainly understand the sentiment underpinning at least part of Amendment 11. I acknowledge the importance of the effective implementation of the provisions in the Bill by enforcement agencies and the crucial role played by the Home Secretary in ensuring that this takes place.
I emphasise that we are working closely with enforcement agencies—the police, the Border Force, the National Crime Agency and the Local Government Association—to ensure the successful implementation of the Bill. All the agencies, supported by the Home Office, will produce guidance for their own officers that will address issues such as those raised by the noble Lord. For example, it seems sensible that the College of Policing, with the national policing lead on drugs policy, is best placed to produce the guidance for police officers, along with our input, as I have said. Similarly, the Local Government Association is well placed to produce tailored guidance for local authorities.
We are also working with other bodies, including the British Retail Consortium and the Association of Convenience Stores, to produce targeted guidance for their members. It is also important to discuss with the Welsh and Scottish Governments and with Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice what guidance is needed to address their national needs. Any guidance for prosecutors in England and Wales is a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
However, I have grave concerns about issuing guidance to users of psychoactive substances on how they might identify such substances, along with their degree of psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms. I have the same concerns about Amendment 12, which states that the Government must establish a network of centres where drug users can get their illegal drugs tested. Although this is doubtless well intentioned, I fear that such approaches could have the opposite effect to that intended. Such initiatives could actually serve to promote the availability of psychoactive substances and encourage their use, which is clearly contrary to the purpose of the Bill. A better approach is to highlight the harms of such substances, alongside wider efforts at prevention.
Baroness Meacher
The Minister referred to testing centres possibly having the opposite effect to that intended. In the Netherlands, where such centres have been in operation for some time, they are actually rather successful. For example, there have been, I believe, no deaths resulting from psychoactive substances. Rather than worry about whether they might have the opposite effect to that intended, I suggest that the Government check with the Netherlands how those centres are working, because they would find that they were working well.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I will certainly take that forward. However, with regard to testing centres, the Dutch model sits within a more tolerant drugs policy that the Netherlands has. Our key message is that there is no safe dose of these drugs, and they should not be taken. Any move towards such a scheme would undermine that message and could encourage drug use, contrary to government policy. This proposal would also cover drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act, not just those covered by this Bill. That would undermine our intentional obligations as a signatory to the UN conventions, and no clear public protection case has yet emerged for such a testing centre.
There is a well-established system for issuing a national alert. Any intelligence that Public Health England receives alerting it to identifiable problems, such as a batch of drugs likely to cause significant risk in England, is acted on.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I am not deliberately trying to oppose every amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, has proposed in Committee tonight. Indeed, if his amendment had simply said that all head teachers shall once per annum bring in an appropriate person to talk about the dangers of drugs, I would have supported it. Indeed, I wish I had thought of it myself.
The point that I am seeking to make is: who is an appropriate person? I discovered in the 1990s in the Home Office that there is not a single Member of your Lordships’ House, not a single Member of the other place, not a single policeman—no matter how young or old—and not a single teacher who would be regarded by young people and children as a legitimate person to preach about the dangers of drugs. I discovered rather late on in my term of office at the Home Office—I wish I had had more time or thought of it earlier, before the 1997 election—that the things that seemed to work were when a school got another teenager who would come in and say, “I am a drug addict, or I used to be a drug addict and look at me now. I can’t pick up boys or girls; half my nose has rotted off. I’m as skinny as a rat. I’ve been thrown out of my house by my parents and I have all these problems”. It was only with other teenagers who looked and sounded like them and came from the same area, rather than men or women in suits, that they believed in the dangers of drugs.
I worry that the noble Lord’s amendment is too state-oriented. It is maybe too bureaucratic. I am certain that if it were carried we would be spending more than £7 million on drug education. I am afraid that it would be snapped up by the Ofsteds, quangos and education bureaucrats who have wonderful programmes that sound good. They would be like the adverts that I thought we had prepared at the Home Office, with men in suits lecturing about the evils of drugs. Like those adverts, they will be completely ineffective. I say to the noble Lord and to my noble friend the Minister that I am very sympathetic to education in schools but it has to be kept simple and appropriate. If kids were cynical at my time in the Home Office in 1994 to 1996 they are a dashed sight more cynical now about being lectured by anyone who is older or outside their own cultural circle. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that if he cannot accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I support very strongly the idea behind the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the importance of education. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that the type of education is absolutely all-important. He said that teenagers do not want someone coming in preaching about drugs. Absolutely—we know from all the research, most of which has been carried out in the US, that lecturing and didactic teaching does not work in the sphere of drugs. We know that. I was going to suggest that we need the words “evidence-based” in the amendment. We know from the evidence that peer involvement—certainly group work with youngsters who have already had or are now having terrible problems with drugs—is the method of education that works. Whether one wants to call it education or whatever, it ideally needs to go on in schools. It does not seem inappropriate therefore to use the word “education”. We all have to be clear what we mean by education but, as for the term “evidence-based”, the evidence points exactly in that direction.
Before you get to that sort of education and imparting —or whatever you call it—of information, there is work already being done in a number of schools up and down the country to improve the resilience of youngsters who are particularly vulnerable to drug addiction. An example is children who are not functioning well at school or have very difficult home lives. There are all sorts of reasons why those children lack resilience. There are very good programmes of resilience-building in schools and for me they are utterly central to the whole business of prevention of drug addiction. This sort of work is far more important even than all the stuff we were talking about earlier about legislation, passionate though I feel about having the right framework in which all these things occur. I would support at least some variant of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, because it is fundamentally important, but let us see if we can come up with something really good for Report. Even better, the Minister could take this away and bring back a well-framed amendment to cover this vital issue.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, I have added my name to the amendment because I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is spot on in terms of the principle of the amendment, which is about education, because it completely shifts the focus. This Bill is essentially reactive. It is getting at what it wants to ban. The great thing about the amendment is that it is proactive. It explains to people why they should not take drugs in the first place. The route is education because we want to ensure that people are aware of the risks so they do not wish to take them in the first place. Otherwise, what we are doing is downstream once they have started taking the substances.
How then do you deliver the education? I take the point that my noble friend Lord Blencathra made about those who should be informing others, because young people listen to other young people and those who have had the experiences. It is absolutely right. They would be the most appropriate people. If somehow one could link a reduction in drug use to school league tables I can assure you that head teachers would be bringing in those appropriate people like a shot to affect outcomes. However, the crucial point here is that what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is getting at with this amendment is worth while in its own right and would be worth pursuing anyway even if the rest of the Bill were not there.
I think we are all agreed that it does not actually have to be precisely in the form in which the noble Lord has brought it forward but there is a general welcome for the principle involved. I regard it as extraordinarily important because if we can stop people wanting to take synthetic substances in the first place then a lot of what we are discussing becomes unnecessary. We really ought to be thinking in those terms and the noble Lord has done a fantastic service by bringing forward this amendment. I hope it will engage my noble friend’s attention to thinking how we educate people about this in the first place. It might be difficult. We might not achieve it, but it is inherently a desirable goal. It is, if you like, a public good.
Baroness Hamwee
My noble friend and I also have in this group Amendments 19 and 22. This takes us to the exemptions from the substances which may be the subject of the commission of an offence, and the other provisions in the Bill.
Our first amendment would allow the Secretary of State, by regulation, to add other substances to the list in Schedule 1. I wondered whether that point was covered by,
“add … any description of substance”,
but I do not think that normal language would mean that, and the Constitution Committee—I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is going to mention this—did not think so either. If it is not going to be possible in the Bill as drafted for other substances to be added, then why not? That seems to fly in the face of the respect that we all pay to the scientific process.
Dealing with certainty of provision and ministerial authority in respect of exempted substances, the Constitution Committee commented—I will mention just this one paragraph—on the powers of the Secretary of State being,
“unconstrained by any explicit statement of the purpose or purposes for which that power may be exercised”,
and suggested that:
“The House may wish to consider whether it is appropriate to confer upon the Secretary of State a power … unconstrained by any textual indication as to the purpose”.
That is part of the theme of certainty, which we touched on earlier. Amendment 19 would require the Secretary of State to exercise that power to add any substance—my addition—or to add or vary any description, or remove any substance, on the basis of recommendations of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency; in other words, to implement its recommendations. The Secretary of State must also use the power to include a substance where that body or the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs,
“determines that the substance poses a low overall risk”.
As regards the bodies which would make recommendations or a determination under this amendment, more than respect has been paid to both those bodies during this debate. The ACMD should be at the front and centre of this debate; it seems to have been somewhat sidelined in some of the consideration of the Bill. Our amendment in the next group, which we will look at next week, addresses that point.
In proposed new subsection (2B) in Amendment 19, we refer to the determination of a substance which poses a low overall risk. I can see that phrase might be thought to be rather woolly and insufficiently tough on drugs. However, it comes straight from Section 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which sets out the role and responsibilities of the ACMD, whose duty is to keep under review drugs, the misuse of which,
“is having or appears to them”—
the ACMD—
“capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem”.
It goes on to talk about,
“preventing the misuse of … drugs or dealing with social problems connected with their misuse”.
I take that to be very wide indeed, and to include health. We think that that phrase would properly link assessments as to what should be exempted with terminology which must now be understood in this field. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 16 I will also support Amendments 14, 17, 18 and 19. Amendment 19, on low-harm substances, links very closely with Amendment 16, and I will concentrate on Amendment 16 because of that particular focus.
Amendment 16 seeks to exempt from the scope of the Bill substances deemed to pose low health, social and safety risks. One of the objectives is to take a small step towards harmonising the Bill with the EU regulation. The Government have every right to opt out of the EU regulation, and of course they did so. However, there are very good reasons for attempting to move towards a degree of harmonisation. Paragraph 1.1 of the EU regulation says that,
“national restriction measures, which may differ depending on the Member State and on the substance, can hamper trade in the internal market and hinder the development of future industrial or commercial uses”.
So there are free market issues where the UK may cause problems for our own industries, and indeed trade, if the Bill goes ahead unamended. Amendment 16 goes some way towards reducing those obstacles to trade. Does the Minister know how significant the commercial and trade implications of the Bill will be for the UK if it is not amended in the way that Amendment 16 suggests and, if not, will he have these barriers assessed before introducing the Bill?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I do not know whether I missed it, but the response seemed to be almost entirely to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. I clearly need to go back and read what the answer was to the first of the amendments and my other amendments in the group. Given the time—
Baroness Meacher
I feel awful intervening at this time of night. We all need to go home. I just want to raise the point that the expert panel was established, as I understood it, rather than referring to the ACMD for its advice on some of these issues. I do not want the Minister to reply right now—perhaps he can do so when we next meet—on the question of how the expert panel was selected. It seems extraordinary to me that any set of experts would advise against having a calibrated system of low, medium and high risk and risk-associated penalties and responses to drugs. At this late hour I do not wish to say more, but I would be grateful if the Minister thought about this before we meet.
Lord Bates
I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She drew attention to Clause 3(3) which states:
“Before making any regulations under this section the Secretary of State must consult such persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,
and asked for further clarification. We have not specified in the Bill who such persons should be, as the appropriate consultees would need to be tailored to the substance under consideration. That said, and reflecting the terms of Amendments 16 and 19, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Pharmacological Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences could well be part of the consultation process. I will leave to one side the matters relating to the role of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because they will be raised in subsequent amendments. Again, I apologise to the noble Baroness for not covering that, but I got a little carried away in responding to the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
Drugs: Cannabis
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to reschedule cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 to enable its use for medicinal purposes.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have no plans to reschedule cannabis. There is clear scientific evidence that cannabis is a harmful drug which can damage people’s mental and physical health, and which can have a pernicious effect upon communities. We will not undermine our continuing efforts to reduce drug harms or circumvent the regulatory process by which drugs are assessed by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency for their safety and efficacy as medicines.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, nine European countries, including Germany and Italy, as well as many other countries across the world, provide access to medicinal cannabis for patients who really need it, while some 30,000 people in this country risk a criminal record in order to take medicines based on cannabis that they need to alleviate their pain and suffering. Will the Minister agree to look at and consider the human rights aspect of UK policy, and will he make the findings of that assessment available to your Lordships in the Library?
Lord Bates
The noble Baroness has a long-held position on these issues in terms of her role in the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform. Obviously that is a respectable position but it is not one that is shared by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which advises the Home Office on drugs misuse. The council’s view is that the case is not made. Where there are derivatives from cannabis, as has recently been the case, applications can be made to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. In fact, in one particular case, which is that of Sativex, the licence to market has actually been granted.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to reducing the risks of drugs to our young people. I also thank the Minister for spending time discussing the Bill with me last week.
I start with the views that the Government and I have in common. We all agree that it is most unhelpful to criminalise young people. From my point of view, the best feature of the Bill is that it does not directly criminalise young people for simple possession or use of psychoactive substances. Also, we all want to reduce deaths of young people from drugs. We want to see a reduction in the incidence of drug addiction. We agree that to ban the most dangerous drugs is necessary, if only to give a clear message to young people that these should not, on any account, be taken. So far, so good. Now let us consider each of the above points and ask whether the Bill will achieve what the Government, I and others hope it will.
First, on deaths from drugs, the argument has been that some 97 people died in 2012 from synthetic psychoactive substances, with similar numbers in other years. In fact, I think that the number is probably nearer 60. The important question is: would a ban reduce the number of such deaths? Unfortunately, it seems not. The experts tell me that all but about five of those deaths resulted from young people taking banned substances—not necessarily even psychoactive substances.
Indeed, I am told that in Ireland, which introduced a blanket ban in 2011, deaths have actually increased. On the basis of existing evidence, therefore, if the Bill has any effect on deaths it is likely to increase them, rather than reduce them. In Poland, too, which introduced a ban on psychoactive substances, the number of poisonings three years after the ban had risen above the pre-ban level. I understand that when the President left office he was asked what his worst mistake was. He said it was the psychoactive substances Bill.
Will the Bill lead to a reduction in the incidence of drug addiction? Sadly, it would appear not. Following the Irish ban, head shops closed wholesale, as others have said. As a result, the market has been driven underground. The Irish advisory committee report expressed concern that it appeared that, as a result of slightly earlier bans, young people had moved back to taking traditional drugs, including cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis. Even heroin use had increased. Also, the web trade in synthetic psychoactive substances is apparently thriving in Ireland. According to the experts, the use of synthetic substances in Ireland is the highest in Europe, despite the 2011 ban—or perhaps because of it; we do not know.
Not only has Ireland seen an increase in the use of synthetic drugs following the ban, but the banned drugs are, of course, far more dangerous today than they were before. They can be purchased only from illegal drug dealers or through the web. Such dealers have no interest whatever in the health of the people who buy materials from them. They regularly mix the drugs with other agents, as we all know, including poisons that cause untold damage and, indeed, death. That is why the deaths issue is far from straightforward. Also, a ban on all synthetic substances means that, by driving them to the dealers or on to the web, young people have no idea what they are taking. This may be the worst aspect of drug taking in this country and elsewhere.
Head shops, on the other hand, want to look after their customers. They do not want to kill or even to harm them. They want them to come back and buy more of their delightful substances. They therefore sell the less-risky substances. Illegal drugs leading to deaths are not generally—perhaps ever—sold by head shops; they are sold in other ways. We may not like head shops, but does the Minister agree that illegal dealers and the web are both infinitely more dangerous? If so, will he discuss how we can best deal with what I call the Irish dilemma?
One of the most important ways to reduce the risk of drugs to young people is through information and education, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and others have mentioned. By banning all psychoactive substances for consumption—even the most harmless ones and maybe even beneficial ones—the Government will fail to give any useful message to young people. Yet messaging and education is far more useful than any law. The law has to be a message; it really does.
If, on the other hand, the Government adopted the proportionate approach of the European Union regulation, young people would immediately recognise that the drugs which were regulated were relatively safe—that is, those that are labelled with the risks and side-effects of the drug and the recommended dose. Those would be regulated drugs. Within such a system, young people would be far more likely to avoid drugs which were banned because the message would be abundantly clear—“Don’t take those; have a go at these”. That is very helpful, I would have thought. Young people really do not want to kill or seriously injure themselves. The problem is that they do not know what on earth they are doing half the time. All they need are clear messages. The Bill does not achieve that at the moment although I hope that we can turn it around so that it does. This is far too important an issue to be left to regulations. I can see that the Bill offers opportunities for regulations to achieve some of these things, but I do not believe that is the right way to do it. I will argue in Committee that we should take this seriously.
We all agree that the Government need to avoid criminalising young people, as I said. A way needs to be found in the Bill to discourage people from switching from synthetic to traditional controlled drugs for which they will immediately face criminal sanctions. They will be criminalised and the Bill will not have achieved its one really good intention—namely, not to criminalise young people. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be willing to discuss how best to achieve this incredibly important objective. Does he agree that the penalties related to a substance should be proportionate to the risks associated with that substance? If so, will he discuss possible ways to achieve that objective, too? For example, we hope to debate an amendment to the Bill which will discourage young people from switching from relatively safe synthetic substances to alcohol. This cannot be a good thing. After all, alcohol kills about 22,000 people a year, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, mentioned. Okay, five people is five too many but five relative to 22,000 is rather a different order of things.
I turn to a few rather different points. Many widely sold drinks contain psychoactive substances. Schedule 1 refers to food, including drink, which does not contain a prohibited ingredient. Does the Minister agree that, as it stands, the Bill would ban beverages containing, for example, small quantities of psychoactive amino acid or quinine? Is tonic water to be banned? One does not want to be frivolous but it is important that we take on board the breadth of this Bill.
Similar problems could arise with commercial products where it is not clear to the authorities whether the substances are for human consumption or not. I understand that industrialists will not be at all happy to be interviewed by the police just in case their normal inputs are covered by the Bill. We need to protect industrialists and people operating in the commercial world. That is what those behind the proportionate European Union regulation exercised themselves to achieve. They did not want the regulation to bother or interfere with commerce.
Another issue concerns establishments involved in research into psychoactive substances. The Bill covers that issue to a degree but does not cover it completely, and there is a lot of worry out there on the part of researchers. Will the Government consider exempting all research units, universities and research enterprises from the scope of the Bill? It would be much simpler if people were not investigated about substances they are importing simply for their work.
Before ending, I want to touch briefly on New Zealand, as the Minister mentioned it. New Zealand tried to introduce a proportionate system whereby private companies were encouraged to pay for research into low-risk substances, and then have those products licensed. It is true that the system did not produce any licensed substances because the costs were too high for those businesses. If the Government were willing to create a rational, successful policy, they could do so, but the research would have to be funded by either foundations or the state, or perhaps a mixture of both. Such a system could be incredibly cost-effective because of course drugs are incredibly costly to the taxpayer, in criminal justice costs, health costs and so on. If you had a number of licensed products—properly labelled and all the rest of it—that young people could take safely, you really might save an awful lot of money for the taxpayer.
In conclusion, new psychoactive substances offer real opportunities for a sensible Government—and I believe this is a sensible Government—to achieve a rational drugs policy which would create a safer world for our young people. I hope we can all work constructively together to achieve that objective.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I support the Bill, not least because it is a good example of why we should take the needs of families into account when setting the legislative agenda. It is my firm belief that we should consciously seek to strengthen families throughout the legislative agenda. This means backing parents as they seek to raise their children with clear boundaries, and protecting young people from those who would seek to profit from their misery. As has been noted throughout this debate, we really are concerned with young people—they are who we keep on mentioning; it is not the older generation but young people we are concerned with.
Our debate is all the more poignant because, according to yesterday’s papers, one young woman remains in hospital after five young people were admitted over the weekend suffering from the effects of taking one such legal high, which was sold openly to them at a festival. It is this human tragedy and the effects on families that should move us to act. It is clear that a rising number of families are being ripped apart by these drugs. Although the shadowy nature of the drugs makes estimation difficult, the signs are there. We have heard a lot of statistics today, but the number of police incidents involving these drugs, including domestic abuse, has gone up by more than 150% in the past year. More people—mostly young, as I have said—are being admitted to hospital. More are entering addiction treatment dependent not on illegal drugs but on this new generation of substances. Tragically, as we have heard, the number of deaths linked to these drugs is rising.
Part of the blame must lie with the sellers, but it also lies with the inadequacy of the law as it stands. Repeatedly, people have said, “They are available in the shops, I thought they were safe”. What help are we providing to parents if we continue to allow this confused state of affairs? On the one hand, we say through the law that certain substances such as cocaine or heroin are bad and should not be available; on the other, we say that substances that produce the same or worse effects are freely available to buy in high street shops—the so-called head shops. The targeting of children is particularly egregious and reveals the intentions of the sellers. Despite being labelled as not for human consumption, these substances are often packaged like sweets and sold at pocket money prices. As numerous undercover reports have found, the sellers know exactly what they are doing and provide advice on how people should take the drugs. It is this availability that is part of the danger to the young. How can parents hope to educate and protect their children when the Government send out such a confusing message?
I want to address those libertarian arguments that people have the right to do whatever they want and government has no right to intervene. With regard to this debate, I am afraid that such an approach does not take into account the realities of life or how people lead their lives. It also abrogates our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society. First, the effects on others in society of those who have consumed these drugs can be profound, which impacts the freedom of others. Beyond the burden on public services—and thereby the taxpayer—we should note the increasing reports of assaults, violence in prison and domestic abuse, all related to the consumption of these drugs.
More importantly, we have a duty, as I say, to protect young people, who are not deemed to be responsible adults. The evidence from Ireland, which we have heard much about this afternoon, is that banning the high street sale of these drugs works to protect young people. I have evidence here which is possibly in contrast to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. The Centre for Social Justice spoke to doctors in hospitals across Ireland last summer, and the message that came back was clear. In 2010, when the ban came in, the number of admissions of young people suffering the effects of these drugs was greatly reduced. One doctor said that the difference was like night and day. This was because the number of head shops went from more than 100 to fewer than 10.
With the internet as an alternative source for these drugs, your Lordships might find it counterintuitive that young people were accessing these substances in high street shops at all. There have been several suggestions as to why this was the case. First, young people think that because the substances are available to buy in a high street shop, they are somehow regulated and therefore safe.
Baroness Meacher
One possible explanation for the drop in people going to hospitals when a ban is introduced is that they are nervous of turning up there having taken an illegal substance. It is possible that the increase in deaths may have something to do with people not going to get the help that perhaps they needed—but we need some more research into these matters.
Lord Farmer
I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention and I take note. Secondly, young people do not necessarily have access to credit cards with which to make online purchases. Thirdly, they might not like the idea of having these drugs delivered to their parents’ home. Whatever the case, the results were stark and the doctors were supportive of the ban. It is of course not the entire solution. Enforcing this law so as to tackle the supply online will be key. What plans does the Minister have to discuss the implementation of the ban with the National Crime Agency?
We also need to ensure that addiction treatment services are available to those who need help. Local authority budgets are, as we all know, strained and everyone is having to make adjustments. However, helping people off drugs and into work is surely an investment worth making. Crucially, we must make sure that prevention, early intervention and education are priorities. We know from prevention science that any message that children receive at school must also be backed up by what they hear at home. This ban will send a clear signal to children and parents that these substances are dangerous and should be avoided. Rather than undermining parents’ authority, the law will put us back on their side. There is no silver bullet—I think that we all agree on that—but as part of a broader response, this action is necessary and proportionate. It is our duty to protect the vulnerable and the young—and so I, too, welcome the Bill and wish it well on its passage through the House.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I rise in the somewhat uncomfortable position of speaking from the Opposition Front Bench to support the generality of the Bill. I hope this will not be a role I shall have to take too often, since Oppositions normally disagree with Governments.
The Bill before us is quite simple. It is interesting that today’s debate has, in many ways, not been about the Bill. Today’s debate has been about the essence of drug policy. A number of noble Lords have said—I praise those who have said it, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—that prohibition does not work. That is not the position of the law at the moment, of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, of the Government, of the Opposition, or of a majority of the general public. There is a belief that prohibition works and the law seeks to enforce those prohibitions. Debate on decriminalisation—that is what much of the debate has been—has been interesting, but it is not what we seek to do.
Baroness Meacher
I just want to raise the point, which has already been mentioned, that it is absolutely clear to everyone involved that across the world and certainly across Latin America, which has been most severely affected by prohibition, prohibition has not worked.
Lord Tunnicliffe
The debate will proceed smoothly if we recognise that I am in a minority. I repeat: prohibition is the policy of the Government and of the Opposition, and it is supported by the majority of people in this country. There have been many interesting speeches, but they have not persuaded either major political party or the general public that that is the way to go.
I put to noble Lords who have that belief that probably the worst place to start with decriminalisation is with NPSs. The whole problem with NPSs is that they are drugs of unknown consequence. The debate about alcohol—I entirely recognise the point that alcohol has serious negative effects, but, as a user, I have to say that it also has some really rather nice, positive effects—should be addressed through education. I entirely take the point brought out by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and by my noble friend Lord Patel that prescribed drugs can have extremely serious effects when mismanaged, but the problem with NPSs and why they should be added to the prohibition we presently have is the unknown consequences. Ultimately, the goal of the manufacturers of these drugs is to create drugs every bit as potent as the presently proscribed drugs and to sell them to our young people, our old people, our hard-working people and our lazy people.
We support what the Bill is trying to do. It is intellectually extremely simple. It basically says that this is a race that is impossible to win, through which dangerous drugs are introduced to the markets, the merits of their impact are then determined and only then are they banned. It is a race that we simply will not win—the criminals will run faster. For that reason, we support the intellectual concept that we ban the generality and then make exceptions. Either you live with that concept and support the essence of the Bill, or you do not.
I have heard a number of speeches essentially saying that noble Lords do not support the essence of the Bill. I praise in particular the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for his unambiguous statement that he will oppose the Bill. That is fair enough and I see where he is coming from; I just do not happen to agree with him and nor do the Opposition. I find it difficult to understand how he can say that after the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.
Part of the Bill could be interpreted as moving into the area of harm: the regulatory powers in Clause 3. Clause 3 allows the Government to add to the list substances which are harmless or negligible in their impact, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said. The Opposition cannot think of such substances or envisage such a situation, but clearly the Bill allows for it. It is arguable that providing that absolute ban and an absolute power in Clause 3 to add new substances to Schedule 1 should be better defined. I would like the Minister to explain further how Clause 3 will be used. What will be the criteria, and the process, for allowing a new substance to be added to Schedule 1? If somebody develops a safer form of alcohol with a different molecular structure, how would they set about getting it added to the list? I do not believe there is a safer form of alcohol; safer consumption is all about education. However, if a safer drug was developed and it came under the terms of the Bill and was introduced, what processes would the manufacturer of such a drug follow?
There are also absolutely proper concerns about research and industry, which were mentioned by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins, Lady Browning and Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. The Government must go out of their way to convince us that those concerns are met. We have to recognise that research is not just about finding out what we do not know, but finding out what we do not know about places where we may not want to go, because you have to understand the environment in which a situation arises. You may be doing research that leads in a direction with which the Government feel uncomfortable, but that is no good reason to ban research that is better informing the debate about drugs. Research establishments, especially established ones with good ethics policies—I am sorry to be rather conservative about this—that know which research to do and how to do it, should have a pretty easy ride in getting their processes approved under Clause 10.
The other area on which I think there is consensus everywhere except in the Treasury is that the non-legislative thrust of the anti-drugs policies should be greatly strengthened. The £180,000 that the Government have almost boasted of spending in this area is pitifully inadequate compared with the problems we are addressing. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, will be able to assure the House that the education and prevention programmes referred to in paragraphs 12, 13 and 14 of the Angelus Foundation literature and the education of professionals to stop prescribed drug abuse activities will be undertaken in parallel.
I hope that the Minister will also be able to assure me that the programmes outlined in the October 2014 government response to the new psychoactive substances review expert panel report still stand, given that that review was published under the coalition. Are the new Government conservative in tooth and claw, as it were? Will they stick to the non-legislative concepts that they promise to stick to in the response, and try to ensure that such efforts are every bit as vigorous as the legislative efforts?
The Bill takes a sensible, proportionate and progressive approach to enforcement. It has the concept of the notice, the order and the criminality. I welcome the fact, as other noble Lords have done, that it is not criminalising simple possession and use, but the problem with that flexible approach is that it needs to be co-ordinated between many local authorities, police forces and the National Crime Agency. I would therefore like an assurance from the Government that the right amount of effort will go into providing guidance to make it work at a local level, and that there will be proper consultation with people who understand this area about providing that guidance. We have heard a number of concerns about the consultation that has gone into the Bill.
On a more detailed point, I dutifully read the Bill, the notes and all the relevant paperwork; I almost feel that one should get a medal for that. But I am still unclear about the “not for human consumption” loophole, so I seek an assurance from the Government that that loophole, which has been used in the past, is properly covered by the Bill.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, raised the issue of international co-operation. The Government should assure us that there will be vigorous efforts to co-operate with our friends in Europe—at least, my friends in Europe—because the extraterritorial jurisdiction issues in this area are very complex, and the more co-operation we can have worldwide, the more effective we will be. But I come back to the fact that we believe in prohibition. We believe the loophole is a dangerous one, and we believe that this Bill is a sensible way of plugging it.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I applaud the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury on his excellent maiden speech. It is an honour to be able to welcome him to your Lordships’ House and on behalf of noble Lords to recognise his wide range of interests and areas of expertise: not only the environment but also the needs of disabled people, including deaf people—which he mentioned in his maiden speech—music, and areas of particular interest to me, namely ethics, psychotherapy and counselling. Many of us will be seeking his support in the months ahead.
On the subject of my contribution today, I welcome the opportunity presented by the Psychoactive Substances Bill to have a detailed debate over the coming weeks about how best to reduce the importation and use of high-risk psychoactive substances. To many, this seems a narrow, rather insignificant issue, but it touches on one of the four major global issues of the 21st century. These are terrorism and security; climate change; the destruction of our seas through pollution; and last but not least, international crime, including very substantial levels of drug-related crime and associated violence and corruption.
The UK has one of the toughest drug policies, yet one of the highest levels of high-risk drug use of any western European country. My perspective on the proposed Bill is informed by the inquiry into new psychoactive substances that we undertook for the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform. We considered evidence from more than 30 organisations, including ACPO, the ACMD and other government bodies, professional associations and very senior medical and scientific experts. The evidence showed that to reduce the use of NPS, any policy must take account of the interaction between the markets for traditional and new drugs. I have to say that I am not convinced that the proposed law yet does that.
One aspect of the Bill I strongly applaud is the apparent aim to limit the proposed ban to the import or supply of NPS, while avoiding criminalising the users of these drugs if they are not also an importer. Drug policies that avoid criminalising young people have tangible benefits to individuals, families and communities, and do not lead to increased levels of addiction. The challenge of responding to the growing use of psychoactive substances offers an opportunity for government to develop policy on the basis of scientific evidence about effective strategies for the first time for 50 years.
Last year, this House debated the European Commission’s regulation on new psychoactive substances. The Government persuaded Parliament to opt out of that regulation because of a strong belief in subsidiarity. I happen to agree that subsidiarity should be the default position, but drugs is one of four key areas where we really do need policy that reaches across national borders. I therefore hope that the proposed Bill can be brought as far as possible into line with the regulation.
What would that mean in practice? The regulation which has been approved by the European Parliament but not yet by the Council, introduces a policy of action proportionate to the level of social, health and safety risks of the drug. That is absolutely critical if the provision is to be taken seriously. Substances that pose severe risks will be submitted to permanent market restriction. The Commission document recognises the harms these substances can cause to the health and safety of individuals; we know they can cause death, injury and disease.
The risk of the proposed ban on “head shop” sales of psychoactive substances is that young people will turn to back-street dealers or the internet, both of which are even less responsible than “head shops”. It has been suggested to me that the Bill could therefore increase the risks to young people, unless we can mitigate those risks.
A blanket ban on new psychoactive substances could prove a serious impediment to UK university-based research into the physiological properties of such substances. Such research is needed before clinical trials can take place. We need to address this issue when we consider the Bill.
Psychoactive substances have other, legitimate uses. The Commission’s regulation specifically takes account of the fact that individual national measures such as those proposed by the Government disrupt trade in legitimate uses of these substances. We will have to look at that issue. Adjusting the Bill to bring it more into line with the regulation would ensure the free movement of psychoactive substances for commercial, industrial, scientific and medical purposes, while providing a graduated and proportionate set of restriction measures for substances posing risks. I wholeheartedly support such controls.
The key point is that a blanket ban will not achieve the Government’s objective. It will not bring about the reduction in the overall use of dangerous drugs that we all want to see. The government agencies that gave evidence to our inquiry made it clear that it is not possible to intercept more than a tiny fraction of the legal highs coming through in packages from China and India to people’s homes. The best hope is that if government policy were logical and sensible, young people might take it seriously. If reasonably harmless psychoactive substances were legal and the more risky ones—one might call them the more dangerous ones—were banned, young people would take note. They do not want to harm themselves but they do not know what they are doing, and I do not think that this Bill necessarily helps.
I look forward to working with the Minister, as I have done before, in a constructive way to generate a Bill which will create a safer world for our young people.