Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Ketamine etc.) (Amendment) Order 2014

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation and to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for the expertise that she brings to this issue. I assume that when she said that the advisory committee to the sub-committee on the misuse of drugs was split on this issue, the kinds of issues that she was raising were ones that caused the concern. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on this one.

With such a serious subject, it is a moment of light relief to enjoy the Minister’s pronunciations of the drugs involved. It is one of those rare occasions when I am grateful that I am not the Minister so I do not have to worry about the pronunciations. But the harms of ketamine and the other drugs have been recognised and are alarming. Successive drugs surveys over the past five years have shown that ketamine in particular has become established as a drug of choice for those who go clubbing and for recreational use, and many of those people will have little idea or knowledge of the dangers they face.

There is not really any strong evidence that reclassification will have any great impact on the prevalence of those drugs, and I am concerned about the public health campaigns that are needed. Very clear messaging needs to go out, and it needs to start in school. Recreational drug users in clubs are more discerning than those who are addicted to drugs, and other more vulnerable users, and are therefore more susceptible to such messages because they are legal-high users. If you have spoken to parents who have lost children, or whose children have been harmed or damaged by recreational drug use, you will know that the messaging needs to be much stronger and much better than it is at the moment. There is a danger that the Government will step back a bit and not take a sufficiently proactive role in this regard to prevent the harms taking hold of a number of young people.

I want to press the Minister on a couple of things. One is the FRANK website. Whenever I raised these issues previously, Ministers always told me, “Ah, we’ve got the FRANK website”. How effective is it? It seems to me that for someone to look at the FRANK website, they have to be interested in the first place and want to understand what is involved. We need to be reassured of its effectiveness. We have to aim further than those who seek out the site because clearly it does not have a wide enough reach. We are not reaching too many of the people who are recreational drug users and who go to clubs and raves but do not understand the harm they are causing themselves. I would like to hear some more not just about the FRANK website but about targeting recreational drug users.

We do not oppose this order because we recognise that there are very serious harms. In relation to ketamine, the Explanatory Memorandum talks about the,

“intense detachment that can be unpleasant and frightening and can put the user in a position of vulnerability to robbery, assault or rape”.

It is not just the harm that the drug causes but the harm that is caused to the person who becomes detached and dissociated from their surroundings and therefore particularly vulnerable. There are those who are making significant amounts of money out of causing this harm to others, but I also take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay: I am sure that the Government do not want to cause problems for those who require drugs such as ketamine for pain control or other medical purposes. If the noble Lord can give us an assurance in that regard, or even tell us that he will take this away and come back to us, that will be extremely helpful. We do not oppose this order and I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, first, I thank both noble Baronesses and the Deputy Chairman for their kind words. It is always a challenge when you are looking to pronounce words that you are not familiar with. With two young children, now I know the challenges they face—if nothing else, it has taught me greater patience in helping them with their reading skills. Nevertheless, I thank the noble Baronesses for their broad support of the Government’s position, and the Committee more widely. I trust that, as both noble Baronesses acknowledged, the Government have made the case for the order to be approved in the House on the basis of the latest available evidence and the ACMD’s advice.

Approval of this order will ensure that our drug laws are effective in relation to both established medicines and newly developed pharmaceutical drugs entering the UK market that are being sought for misuse. It will also ensure that we are taking effective action on compounds that have no legitimate use outside research and which are already being pushed on to the legal-highs market.

From having done a debate on the issue of legal highs previously in the House, I think that everyone, no matter where they are in the argument, is cognisant of the fact that for anything that is banned today there will be a derivative ready and on the shelves tomorrow. This is something on which we need to be increasingly vigilant. We will of course ensure that those drugs that have a legitimate use in healthcare and veterinary practice continue to be available under a regulatory framework which protects the public from their potential harms.

Before I turn specifically to the questions that were raised by the noble Baronesses, I commend the ACMD for its continuous work and support of our priorities, including on new psychoactive substances. I have already mentioned that the fast pace of the new psychoactive market continues to require us to be ever more careful with the prioritisation of our resources, and underscores the need for closer working within a broader network of partners in the UK and abroad, and the need to preserve the integrity of our drug laws. The ACMD’s advice also reminds us of the dangers of prescription medicine when misused.

I turn to some of the questions that were raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, speaks with great expertise in these areas. I listened carefully to the issues that she raised. On reclassifying ketamine, as noble Lords are aware, ketamine is already controlled and scheduled, and therefore available for legitimate use in healthcare. As a result, we are able to reclassify it without impacting on its availability for legitimate use. By reclassifying at the earliest opportunity, the Government are sending out a strong message to those who misuse the drug. I assure the noble Baroness that a final decision on scheduling will be made after a public consultation to assess the impact of its schedule 2 status, as recommended by the ACMD.

The noble Baroness asked about other issues relating to its availability. The ACMD has recommended that this subject be subject to a public consultation to assess the impact should ketamine be scheduled, as I have said. As such, ketamine will continue to remain a schedule 4 part 1 drug until a final decision is made on the schedule in which it will be placed following the public consultation.

The noble Baroness made some valid points on availability and the issue of the licensing fee, particularly for hospices. Anyone who has experienced, sometimes sadly and tragically, the absolutely sterling work that hospices do will know that, while it involves great personal tragedy for a lot of the families involved, the role of hospices in the lives of those who are perhaps at their final point is quite incredible. The Government are cognisant of the incredible role they play in community and society. I therefore say to the noble Baroness that licensing requirements will come into play only after rescheduling. I have already mentioned that in the context of the public consultation. On ketamine, I will look at Hansard again to see whether there are any outstanding questions.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I am sure that that is very much the case. However, I will counter the noble Baroness’s suggestion by asking her, if she is aware of the names of those bodies, to please forward them, and I shall ensure that officials include them in the official notice of consultation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised a couple of questions about talking to FRANK. I remember that when I first came across this website in local government, my first question was, “Who’s Frank?”, because he seemed to know an awful lot. Of course, FRANK is the website used to share information. The noble Baroness makes a valid point about ensuring that the support and information that is available should not be restricted to just one particular website. Whether we are talking about institutes of higher education or about clubs et cetera—wherever drugs may be used for recreational use—it is important that people are informed about the availability of this website. I have taken on board a couple of suggestions that the noble Baroness made. I also say to her that drugs education is part of the science national curriculum at key stages 2 and 3. Provision in this area can be built also through personal, social, health and economic discussions. The Talk to Frank website was relaunched. More than 35 million people have now used it and millions have called the FRANK helpline.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

The Minister said that 35 million people have used the website. Is that 35 million individual users, or have there been 35 million occasions on which somebody has looked at the site?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I would suggest that it is the latter: it refers to hits on the website. The noble Baroness’s point is well made and I understand it.

The noble Baroness made some very practical suggestions. I think that we are all at one in believing that we need to tackle the misuse of drugs. If so-called “legal highs” are still available on the market, they should be made available in an orderly fashion. Wherever information can be shared, it should be shared as widely as possible through the healthcare system and any other social support system—the FRANK website is one such example. If there are suggestions as to where other tools can be used to ensure that we make this information more readily available, I am sure that we would all welcome them in terms of sharing best practice. As I said in my opening remarks, when I was in local government we encouraged the sharing of information through local healthcare providers and the local healthcare system to ensure that information was available to all.

Finally, on the new psychoactive substances review, the Government are conscious that more needs to be done to tackle the emergence of new psychoactive substances. This is why my honourable friend the Minister for Crime Prevention is leading a review by an expert panel on how the UK’s response to new psychoactive substances can be enhanced beyond the existing measures. The expert panel’s primary purpose is to look at how the current legislative framework can be strengthened, as well as at the health and educational aspects of the challenges that we face. The expert panel is expected to report its findings to Ministers in late spring.

I thank both noble Baronesses who participated in this debate for their broad support. They have both made useful suggestions on how we can move this forward. I hope that noble Lords will find that this legislative measure is conducive to ensuring that the public are protected as much possible from the harm caused by drugs that can be dangerous when misused. I commend the order to the Committee.