Drug Consumption Rooms

Debate between Bill Grant and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the clearest failings in public policy has been the war on drugs. Treating addicts as criminals has clearly failed; it does not work. It led to 3,744 deaths last year alone. If hon. Members think more enforcement will work, I am afraid they are sadly deceived. The evidence from around the world shows time and time again that DCRs are a way to help people stop taking drugs. They are places where people can engage safely.

Let us take Sydney as an example. In 1999, the Kings Cross area of Sydney was known particularly for its large number of overdoses and deaths. In the British national picture, I see similar patterns in parts of Brighton and Hove. I remember visiting Sydney at that time, and it was a problem. Drug consumption rooms were trialled, and after 10 years KPMG commissioned an independent report, which found that in those 10 years there was not one single fatality among any of the users who had attended the rooms. Let me repeat that, because some hon. Members do not seem to get the difference. In Sydney, where there were 4,400 drug users, not one single person died, whereas 3,744 died in Britain last year. I know which system I would prefer: the one that led to no deaths on my hands. People who advocate for a cracking down are advocating for the deaths of sons, daughters, friends and family members. That is the cruel reality of the current policy.

[Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)]

For clarity, is the hon. Gentleman saying that, after the introduction of DCRs in Sydney, there were no drug deaths whatever as a result of the introduction, or were there no drug deaths among the users of the rooms?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The KPMG study found that there were no drug deaths among the people who had used and engaged with the rooms, of whom there were 4,400 over that time. During that period, there was an 80% reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs relating to drug issues in Sydney, and a reduction in the average number of overdoses in public locations by more than three quarters. The rooms provided 9,500 referrals to welfare services in the wider communities. Most importantly, they won the support of residents and neighbours.

One of the things we hear time and again—I am sure this will be brought up—is that people do not want these things in their backyard. As colleagues have said, the reality is that they are in people’s backyards—quite literally. I remember canvassing up flights of stairs in tower blocks, and people were shooting up right in front of me. They had nowhere to go and no support was offered. The only thing we can do is ring the police, but we know that in a day or so the revolving door will start again. How does that help with the pressure on our police? How does that help with the pressures on our communities? The reality is that it does not.

Globally, countries have gone down two tracks: the prohibition track or the treatment track. At the same time, in all those jurisdictions, usage has slightly decreased. However, in jurisdictions that go down the prohibition route, the harm caused by those harder drugs has rocketed and the number of people getting stuck in long-term habits has increased. Under the treatment route, as we have seen in Portugal and so on, we have seen long-term usage go down and the harm slashed. Surely that is what our policies must be about: the harm to communities and individuals.

I will not speak for much longer, because I know that lots of other colleagues want to speak, but I will touch on some of the issues that have been raised about policing. I feel the policing issue is something of a straw man argument. If there is a centre that people are asked to go to for treatment and to abstain from drugs and stop their addictions entirely, should those people be stopped from going to the centre on the off chance that they might have drugs on them because they are addicts? Should they be followed home? Should we try to entrap them? We do not do that at the moment, so suggesting that the police would need to do that with DCRs is a straw man argument.

No law is perfect, and there are grey zones, but surely it is better to work within those legal grey zones, deal with issues through dialogue with the police and save lives, than to have a system in which we have a hard and fast rule and thousands and thousands of people die. Some 56 people died from 2014 to 2016 in my city of Brighton and Hove—it is also the city of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who I am sure will testify—which is actually lower than in previous years.