Drugs Policy

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I cannot agree with the noble Lord. On the contrary, the Government are doing just that: they are having a wide-ranging debate. I have alluded to the comparators study. Just to pick up his initial points, if we look at drug use in England and Wales, it is down—8.2% in 2012-13. If we look at those people who have to access treatment, he said that there was no focus. That is also down to only five days. The misuse of drugs, and the deaths associated with that, is down. Waiting time is down, and a record number of people are completing their treatment. The Government are emphasising, as I said, prevention, education and enforcement. This is a balanced approach, looking at international comparators, and if one looks at, for example, Sweden, it has zero tolerance, and drug use there is very low.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, if we treated drug users as patients rather than criminals, we would have more resources to ensure that every child in every school had a balanced PSHE course that warned them of the dangers of taking up drugs in the first place?