Drugs Policy

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The briefing from Transform states:

“No one has died from an overdose, anywhere in the world, ever, in a supervised drug consumption room”.

If Transform has made a mistake, I apologise.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because he is making such a powerful case about the importance of evidence-based policy. Is it not the case that drug consumption rooms allow us to reach people who would otherwise be very hard to reach and, over time, build up trust and bring them into recovery? The purpose of drug consumption rooms is not simply to go on handing out drugs to people, day after day. It is to reach those hard-to-reach people and bring them into recovery, over time.

[Norman Lamb]

I totally agree, and I applaud the hon. Lady for the work she has done in arguing the case for reform. Trials of this type of approach have shown huge reductions in acquisitive crime resulting from illegal drug use and in the small-time dealing indulged in to pay for the habit, but the Government withdrew the funding for these trials in April 2016. How short-sighted! The strategy stresses the importance of listening to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, but it recommends the use of rooms where drugs can be taken safely, heroin prescribing and, in effect, the decriminalisation of the use of drugs, and the Government are doing none of those things. If the Government say they should listen to the council, they should please listen to what it is arguing for.

It seems to me there is a dishonesty to this debate. In the foreword to the strategy, the Home Secretary says:

“By working together, we can achieve a society that works for everyone and in which every individual is supported to live a life free from drugs”.

Incidentally, does that mean “free from drugs” other than the most dangerous drug, alcohol, which we of course allow to be sold and take the tax from? The objective or ambition of a world free from drugs is unachievable, as other hon. Members have pointed out, so let us just get rid of this fantasy at the heart of the so-called war on drugs, which has been a stupid and catastrophic failure. Such an international policy approach has had extra- ordinary consequences. It has massively enriched organised crime, to the tune of billions of pounds every year. It has also criminalised young people in particular, and it has had a disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities.

Illegal drug use is actually lower among black and minority ethnic groups than in the white population in this country, but black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs than white people. Our son, who is in the music business, was driving in London in the middle of the night, on his way back from a recording at the BBC, when he was stopped in his car. He happened to have a black artist with him, who said, “This is just a fact of life in London for us. This is what happens to us.” They were all pinned up against a wall as they were searched for illegal drugs. There were no illegal drugs in the car, but this is too often what black people in our inner cities have to cope with week in, week out, and it is not acceptable. Black people in London are five times more likely to be charged for the possession of cannabis than white people. This is extraordinary discrimination.

We criminalise people with mental health problems. We know that there is massive comorbidity: if people are suffering from mental ill health—depression, anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder—they may well end up taking drugs as an escape from the pain that they are suffering, and then we prosecute them and give them a criminal record. How cruel and stupid! There is hypocrisy in that the former Prime Minister famously took cannabis when he was at Eton and many members of this Government have probably taken drugs in their time, yet they are happy to see the careers of other citizens blighted by criminal convictions for what they did in their younger years. Surely that is intolerable.

The strategy addresses the issue of decriminalisation and refers to the evidence of harm, yet we know that the most dangerous drug for causing harm is alcohol, as I have already said, to which the Government take a completely different approach. They still use the language of having a tough approach to enforcement, yet the Home Office’s own report from a couple of years ago showed that there is no link between the toughness of a regime and the level of drug use in society. The illegal market also causes extreme violence in our communities. To control the market in a particular community, all people can do is resort to extreme violence to protect it; they cannot have resort to the courts, as other capitalists do. It has always been disadvantaged communities that suffer the most.

I recommend to anyone here who is interested in this subject the book by Johann Hari, “Chasing the Scream”, which refers to the extraordinary spikes in violence—particularly in America, where there is ever a legal clampdown on the suppliers of drugs to communities—when new suppliers come into a community and seek to gain control of the market. The only way they do that is by using extreme violence.

As I have said, in Portugal, after initial resistance, there is political unity across the spectrum. In the United States, more and more states are moving towards regulated markets for cannabis. In Canada, a Liberal Government are legislating to introduce a legal regulated market. In the UK, I commissioned an expert panel that included a serving chief constable, Michael Barton from Durham. Its recommendation was that in the interests of public health—not despite public health, which is an important point for the Minister—we should move towards a regulated market where we control potency, who grows it and who sells it. That protects those at risk of psychosis and memory impairment because potency is controlled. If people buy from a criminal, they have no idea what they are buying. The criminal has no interest in people’s welfare; they simply want to make a fast buck from them. If people buy from a regulated seller, there is a chance to avoid the sort of harm that we see so often at the moment.

I make this plea: do not claim that the case for change is irresponsible, but bring about change because it will save lives, it will reduce HIV and hepatitis C infection, it will protect people better, it will end the ludicrous enriching of criminals, it will cut violence in our poorest communities, it will end the self-defeating criminalisation of people who have done exactly the same thing as successful people in government, in business and in all sorts of walks of life, and it will raise vital tax revenues. Follow the evidence. Do not perpetuate the stigma and the fear. End this catastrophic approach to drugs policy.