Drugs Policy

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

Okay, I will take a few more interventions.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

Greater Manchester police would argue that since the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 supply has shifted to the streets, and the product was more consistent in the headshops, whereas now it is constantly changing. Does the Minister agree that that shift is part of the reason for the epidemic of Spice use in Manchester, which is causing huge problems?

[Sarah Newton]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comment. We were all really concerned when we saw those images of people on this kind of new zombie Spice in Manchester, but I was pleased that the 2016 Act proved itself in the case of Spice, because as soon as we saw those dangers emerging we were able to take action to ban it through that Act. As we did the testing to understand the chemical components and how serious they were, we were then able to shift them into the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which gave them a proper classification. Just this Friday I was pleased to see that in Manchester the whole community got together with other cities—there were people there from Nottingham and Wrexham. Law enforcement, the mayor, civil society and local authorities all came together to do exactly what we are proposing in the drugs strategy, which is to take a multi-agency approach, so that the issues that brought about those awful scenes we saw, where vulnerable homeless people in Manchester were so wickedly targeted with that type of Spice by drug dealers, are now being properly managed. This allows homeless people to get the support they need so that they do not fall prey to that activity. The more stringent measures and sentencing available under the Misuse of Drugs Act mean that the police in Manchester have the full range of tools they need to take action there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

That is a perfectly proper question. The only solution I have come up with—and I am a person, not a think-tank or a Home Office official—is to continue and increase our pressure on criminal gangs. We are getting better at it, but we need to work internationally with other countries. We could do more in some of the countries I have mentioned to try to remove the financial attraction of giving a field over to opium poppies.

I take that approach rather than the “let’s regulate it” approach—apart from my cynicism that the dealers will withdraw from criminal activity—because of the nature of addiction. When I used to mitigate for young people in the criminal courts, I would try to explain the addiction in the following way. I think that it takes three forms. There is the physical addiction, in which the body craves the next fix. There is also the mental addiction: “How can I cope? How can I get through the day, the week, without my next fix, my few fixes?” But there is also the social addiction.

If you are in such a dark place that you are addicted to a class A substance, you will probably not be hanging out with people who are not also addicted. We know that people gather to share instruments, substances and so on. That is a social addiction, and it must be challenged. I hope that that will happen, and I am very encouraged by what I have seen in the drugs strategy. At present, when a prisoner is released from a certain prison in south London—I will not name it—the dealers line up on the avenue outside the prison saying, “Oh, hello, old friend, you are back, would you like a fix on me?” If we can break that social addiction, it will help such people to break the addiction overall.

I welcome the idea of a national recovery champion, and all the other ideas in the drugs strategy, because we are finally looking properly at the ill effects of addiction as well as the law enforcement side. However, I still strongly believe that we must focus on the criminal aspect. It is possible that, in the event of regulation or decriminalisation, some addicts would be able to make the journey to the local chemist, or wherever it might be, to pick up their doses, but I fear that the social addiction and the pressure of the dealer would still play a part. The dealer would say to the addict, “Oh, well, you may be getting your fix from the chemist or wherever, but you really want to buy your fix from me, don’t you?”

Given the mental and the social addiction and the threats that dealers are quite prepared to use, I fear that there will be a black market, and there is evidence to suggest that that would happen. We know that, sadly, when heroin users are prescribed methadone, they are not always able to withstand the enticements of their dealers. That may be partly because they want to carry on using heroin, but I worry that the regulation/decriminalisation strategy will allow the dealers to carry on dealing on the streets.

[Jeff Smith]

There is a black market in tobacco and there is a black market in alcohol, but most people do not obtain their tobacco and their alcohol from the black market. Is it not the case that there would be less temptation, and that over time there would be a reduction in the number of people using dealers?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because the subject of counterfeit cigarettes was next on my list. Again, I speak from personal experience. I prosecuted a criminal gang who, at the time, controlled the counterfeit cigarette market in the north of England. When the customs knocked out that gang—they did fantastically well: they got the guy at the very top as well as the distributors at the bottom—that knocked out the counterfeit cigarette market in the north of England for six months. After that, however, another gang came in and filled the vacuum. I do not have to hand the figures on usage of counterfeit cigarettes, but it is a fact that many people seek them out, not least because cigarettes are generally priced very highly—and rightly so, because we want people to stop smoking. Although I do not have the figures now, I remember reading them when I was dealing with that case. It is compelling to see many people use counterfeit cigarettes.

We know that there is also a growing market in counterfeit alcohol. In the last six months, corner shops have been warned that they need to be aware of very good reproductions of certain brands of vodka. The vodka that people may be buying in good faith from their local shop is, in fact, far more alcoholic than they would expect. I hope that, if nothing else, I am explaining my worries about how complex the position is, and demonstrating that we cannot just rely on the idea of regulation and decriminalisation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on a really excellent speech? It was a privilege to be here for the first maiden speech by a brightly coloured turbaned Sikh. I am looking forward to a number of maiden speeches today. In my own maiden speech two years ago, I said among other things that I looked forward to arguing for reform of our drug laws. There has been very little chance to do so since then, so I welcome the debate today. However, unfortunately, the Government’s new drug strategy is a massive missed opportunity.

We do not get a new strategy very often. There is always the hope that it might contain some radical thinking. This strategy, sadly, offers little that is new. It is more of the same approach that is not working, that has seen an increase in drug-related deaths in the UK and that sees the UK responsible for nearly a third of Europe’s drug deaths.

My friend Cara’s son is five tomorrow. It will be his third birthday without his father Jake, who died of a heroin overdose. Cara wants to legalise drugs to end the stigma around drug use and to end the unnecessary criminalisation of drug users that made it so hard for her family to deal with Jake’s addiction, and makes it more difficult for people to seek help with drug problems.

The day after tomorrow, Thursday, will be the fourth anniversary of the death of 15-year-old Martha Cockburn, who died after taking ecstasy that turned out to be 91% pure; as a result, she died of an accidental overdose. Martha’s mum, Anne-Marie, who I think is in the Public Gallery, now campaigns for the legalisation and regulation of ecstasy, among other drugs. Martha died because there was no controlling measures on the substance that killed her and no way for Martha to check the safety of the substance she was using. Martha was failed by our approach to drug policy.

Many people who have been touched by the loss of loved ones want a more measured debate and a more rational approach to drug policy. Fifty people a week are dying of drug-related deaths in the UK—50 Marthas and Jakes. Our first duty in this place has to be to try to keep people safe and we are failing. The biggest missed opportunity in this strategy is the fact that we have not even considered decriminalisation or legalisation of some drugs as a solution to the problem. We have heard a number of times about Portugal, which decriminalised the use of drugs in 2001. Its drug-induced death rate is five times lower than the EU average. It had 16 overdose deaths last year and there has been a massive reduction in HIV infections.

In an article last week on the publication of the strategy, the Home Secretary said:

“We owe it to future generations to work together for a society free of drugs.”

Talk of a society free of drugs is a dangerous fantasy. Humans have taken drugs for thousands of years and are not going to stop because the Home Secretary produces a new strategy. It is a dangerous fantasy because it diverts attention and resources from the real challenge, which is how we make drug taking safer, how we educate users, how we reduce the consumption of dangerous drugs, how we take control of the drug trade from the criminals who want to exploit vulnerable users, and how we stop criminalising thousands of people unnecessarily. Many people are being criminalised because they have a medical or psychological problem. We need to recognise the link between early childhood trauma, including abuse, and addiction in later life. It is a closer link than that between obesity and diabetes. Drug addiction is often a psychological or biological problem, and criminalising people who have those problems is not the answer. In other cases, we are criminalising people unnecessarily for using a relatively harm-free intoxicant.

The best example is cannabis. It is surely wrong that we criminalise people for using a substance less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol—a substance that the overwhelming majority of people find pleasant, relatively harm-free and even a rewarding experience to take. We have all-party parliamentary groups that extol the virtues of beer, wine and whisky, but when we talk about a substance that is less harmful than alcohol, we are not allowed to say that it can be a positive experience.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, but I regret to say that he is wrong in one particular regard. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has made it crystal clear that cannabis is an extremely dangerous drug that can be a gateway to mental health difficulties. Does he not agree that, if we were to decriminalise it, it would send a dangerous message to young people that cannabis is somehow safe? Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Jeff Smith]

No, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, because I do not think that is the evidence and I do not think that is the message. There is a host of evidence through the years that cannabis is far less dangerous than alcohol.

[Norman Lamb]

Is not the problem that when one is buying in the criminal market one has no idea what one is buying? One could be buying a very heavy strain, whereas if we regulate we have control over the potency of the substance that we are trying to control.

[Jeff Smith]

That is absolutely right. We talked earlier about the use of skunk, which has very high THC content. If one were to regulate the cannabis market, one could balance the THC and CBD elements of the product and make it safer for people.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend is making an informed statement. Does he agree that cannabis sativa and cannabis indica are totally different from the skunk that we have discussed? The experience in the western United States is that one can have a perfectly civilised purchasing system for cannabis sativa and cannabis indica. May I possibly appeal to the more avaricious elements on the Government Benches, as that is a vast revenue stream of taxation, which surely should delight even their dark hearts?

[Jeff Smith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. He knows it, and I suspect that very many Members in this House know it—far more than are represented here today. I think plenty on the Government side know it, too, and perhaps even the Home Secretary knows it but, because of the toxic climate of the debate around drug policy, we are not able to say so.

If we legalised and regulated cannabis, we would take it out of the hands of the dealers, and reduce the opportunities for them to tempt users into experimenting with more dangerous drugs. We would also regulate the product, so users know with confidence what they are getting, so people who are worried about high levels of THC do not have to take whatever they can get on the street. There is a bonus too: we would raise many millions of pounds for the Exchequer to spend, if that is what we desire, on drug education or the NHS.

Around the world, countries recognise that cannabis prohibition is failing, and many of them are regulating. Uruguay was the first to do so. Eight states in the US, representing 20% of the population, have now legalised and regulated. Next year, Canada should become the first G7 country to do it. It is time we did the same. My personal belief is that this is going to happen. It is inevitable that it is going to happen in this country; we just need to grasp the nettle and do it.

We desperately need to change the terms of the debate. We need more openness and honesty in discussion of drug policy, and we need to reduce the stigma around taking drugs so that families find it easier to discuss the problem and find help. We need to stop the pretence that everyone’s experience of illegal drugs is negative.

In my previous life, I worked as a DJ and an event manager in the music industry, so I spent a lot of time working and socialising in nightclubs, being around people who used recreational drugs. Many thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of ecstasy pills are taken every week in the UK, and we cannot pretend in our public discourse that people who are taking drugs do it because it is a terrible, miserable experience; people will not believe us, and it will destroy the credibility of the message. We need an honest and rational debate around drug policy if users, especially young people, are going to take us seriously.

Most of all, we need to focus on policies that minimise harm and risk to users, and that requires looking at different approaches to harm reduction. That is where this strategy is disappointing. The Government have ignored the chance to do that by looking at interventions that can save lives—at drug consumption rooms for heroin users, at heroin prescribing, at pill testing—and we need a much stronger emphasis on educational solutions if people are caught breaking what is currently the law.

If I get caught speeding in my car, I am sent on a course to teach me to drive more carefully. Those courses have a high success rate. If I am driving a speeding car, I have the potential to do much more harm to society than if I am caught in possession of cannabis or ecstasy for personal use, but the latter is a criminal offence, with the potential for a damaging criminal record, and the former a civil offence. There is no reason not to treat drug possession for personal use in the same way.

I want to say a few brief words about medicinal cannabis. Although it is not really covered in this strategy, we looked at it last year in the all-party group for drug policy reform. There is overwhelming evidence that cannabis is a useful treatment for a range of conditions. In some cases, people find relief in cannabis, having exhausted treatments that have failed. Some people may have seen an article in the Daily Mail recently that asked whether a woman should be criminalised for medicating with cannabis. When even the Daily Mail accepts that there is an argument for change, that surely illustrates how far behind public opinion the House is on the issue. We should follow many countries, as well as half the states in the USA, and legalise cannabis for medicinal use.

Finally, I want to mention resourcing. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said earlier, passing responsibility for drug treatment to local authorities was a good idea in practice. However, there is a huge problem for local authorities that commission addiction services because of the massive cuts to local authority budgets.

Some drugs are dangerous, and we need to get drugs under control, but I do not want those words to be misinterpreted; I do not mean that we need to ban the use of drugs. The production, retail and use of some drugs needs to be controlled, so people can use drugs safely if they choose to do so. Prohibition is not working in the UK or around the world. We need a new approach. We need to treat addiction as a health issue. We need to stop criminalising people unnecessarily. We need to begin considering proper, evidence-based strategies. We certainly need to move towards legalising cannabis, and I believe that that is only a matter of time. We also need to look seriously at the decriminalisation of other drugs.

I have spoken today not because I think I am going to secure a massive change in the Government’s drug policy; indeed, I do not expect any quick progress on drug policy. I just think we need to start reframing the debate. There are a limited number of us who are prepared to speak up on this issue at present, but I hope the numbers will gradually increase, because we need a serious debate on this issue, not more of the same approach, which has failed.