Legal Highs

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I appreciate having had the opportunity to go the Backbench Business Committee, Mr Chope, to put my request for a debate on another subject, and the opportunity to participate in this debate as well.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) on bringing the matter forward for debate. He said something that we can all support, which is that the issue exists in all our constituencies. My position on drugs and substances has always been clear and the issue of legal highs gravely concerns me. Urgent action needs to be taken and legislation is needed to stop young people being sold those dangerous substances from corner shops. It is outrageous that such harmful substances are so easily accessible to the vulnerable. Deaths from legal highs, which can be sold freely as long as they are labelled “not suitable for human consumption”, have jumped from 10 in 2009 to at least 68 in 2012, according to Britain’s national programme on substance abuse deaths. If any argument is needed, surely those figures are testament enough to how urgently action needs to be taken by the Government.

In fact, just a few days ago, on 27 June, two addicts passed out in a public toilet in Somerset after injecting themselves with legal highs. As if that was not bad enough, the toilets were close to a park that is full of children and adults during busy lunch times. I believe that the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) mentioned examples of such incidents happening in the day time. That has a detrimental effect on shopping, and on the activities of children and families. No arrests were made because the substances were not illegal. Where, then, are the deterrents? Perhaps the Minister can tell us what they are. Those are not the kind of scenes that we want our children to be subjected to; we do not want them to grow up thinking that such behaviour is normal and, furthermore, that it is okay to take such substances because they are not illegal. Clearly, although they are not illegal, they are still having harmful effects, and can lead to death.

I was pleased to hear that Glastonbury festival, which has been much in the news in the past week, has, along with several other festivals this year, taken steps to ban legal highs. That was done through the Association of Independent Festivals, which co-ordinates the campaign “Don’t be in the Dark About Legal Highs”. There is concern at every level about what legal highs do. If festivals are campaigning and showing their concern, the Government and the Minister’s response should reflect that.

Two or three months ago, I was on a Delegated Legislation Committee on legal highs. I supported Government policy at the time, as did the Labour party, but unfortunately it was not supported by the Lib Dems on the Committee. However, the majority of Members of Parliament supported the legislative change that was coming in.

It is fantastic to see such influential festivals getting involved in the campaign to rid our country of these potentially fatal substances, but more is required. Ian Rodin, a consultant psychiatrist and part of Glastonbury’s medical team, has pointed out:

“The problem with legal highs is people had assumed that if they were harmful they would be illegal, so people haven’t exercised the same caution as they would with an illegal drug.”

That is a clear policy direction from those involved in that and other festivals. They recognise the problem and are doing what they can to address it where they have responsibility. I understand that it is difficult for the Government to legislate against legal highs, given the nature of the substances and their ability to change quickly as new ones appear, but we must encourage and support community groups and police officers in tackling the problem.

I was delighted to see that mephedrone, once a legal high that was widely available and that caused grave concerns to parents in my constituency, has been made illegal. Unfortunately, whenever a substance is made illegal, other legal highs come in to take their place. There must be a policy like the one in the States to which the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) referred, which seems to take all that in. Maybe that is what we need to consider. We must be able to adapt to any other legal highs that suddenly come on the market.

The decision on mephedrone is certainly a step in the right direction. I hope that a similar decision will be made on AMT, a drug that appeared in the 1960s but that has been on the rise as a legal high across the United Kingdom in the past year or so. AMT can make users feel upbeat and excited. However, like all drugs, legal or illegal, it can cause hallucinations that can lead to paranoia, reduced inhibitions and, in turn, serious injury or even death. My greatest concern is that AMT is active in very small doses, meaning that it is all too easy to overdose. How can we allow that legal high to remain on the market? Again, perhaps the Minister will give us some indication of what is happening. A teenager from Southampton, Adam Hunt, died last year after taking AMT at his home, yet the drug is still available across the United Kingdom, even though it has been shown to have detrimental effects. Surely the loss of that young man’s life should be evidence enough that the drug needs to be banned.

According to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, AMT acts in the same way as LSD, and the council has called for it to be made a class A substance. Given the increasing number of young people having serious and, in some cases, fatal responses to such substances, that request must be met urgently. The ACMD agrees that along with AMT, another group of chemicals known as tryptamines, which includes 5-MeO-DALT, known as “rock star” or “green beans”, must be banned as well, as they are highly potent drugs that have become increasingly available over the past few months.

Just this morning, as I was on my way to Westminster to participate in business here today and tomorrow, I saw that my local paper, the Belfast Telegraph, carried a story, which I showed to the hon. Member for Chesterfield before this debate, with the headline, “Legal drug is linked to 19 deaths, inquest told”. The article reads:

“A drug involved in the deaths of 19 people in Northern Ireland is still unregulated, meaning it is legal to buy, sell and use…Forensic scientist Simon Cosby told Coroner James Kitson that there was very little known about 4,4”—

I will not say the next word, because I will probably get it all wrong, but it has about 20 letters—

“because it was a relatively new drug, and it is still not covered by legislation, therefore it is not illegal, and had been linked to 18 other deaths”

in the Province. Again, given that there have been so many deaths and there is so great an impact on communities not only across Northern Ireland but across the whole United Kingdom, we must do something fairly drastic to address the issue of legal highs.

We must be aware that although such substances might be considered legal, they often contain one or more chemicals that it is illegal to possess. Furthermore, the majority of legal highs have not been used in drugs for human consumption, so they have not been tested to ensure that they are in fact safe. Unfortunately, due to the lack of drug testing, the long-term health effects of the drugs are virtually unknown, as is the case with many other legal highs, but given what we know about the potential short-term dangers, the overall effect cannot be good.

What worries me even more is the fact that children can buy such drugs easily and cheaply. Before mephedrone was made illegal, children in my constituency could buy it for just £5, which was well within the buying power of almost any young child in my constituency. It was of great concern to me at the time, and it still is. Not only can teenagers buy some of those substances from local shops, they can purchase them easily online, often without anyone knowing. That gives rise to the question of whether there is a greater role for parents as well, and I am sure that the Minister will say that there is. Parents have a role in being aware of what their children are doing and keeping them safe. I appreciate, as always, that it is very difficult to watch everything that children do, particularly as they get older, but I urge parents to be aware of where their kids go and what they do after school or in the evenings, and to monitor their activities online.

As legal highs become increasingly available, more young people experiment with them, which leads to peer pressure, causing even more young people to feel obliged to fit in by doing what everyone else is doing. It is important that young people have somewhere safe to hang out with their friends, whether it is a local youth centre or a sports club. At least such places give parents peace of mind, and it means that they can monitor their children’s activities to some degree.

In conclusion, I urge the Government to ensure that AMT, the legal high that I mentioned earlier, is made illegal immediately, and that the various other legal highs currently on the market, including tryptamines, are also banned. We need to rid our society of these vile substances to prevent any other illnesses or deaths of the kind described in the newspaper article I read from destroying the lives of our young people, and ultimately those of their families as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Chope, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) on securing this debate on a very important issue. In his opening remarks, he set out the situation that we find ourselves in today and the specific problems that he has identified in his own constituency. I listened to his account of what is going on in and around the Reefer store, and it sounds absolutely dreadful. Also, his account of the effects of the substance called Clockwork Orange was particularly concerning. I had a quick look in my own local paper, the Hull Daily Mail, which recently ran a story about Clockwork Orange. The headline was:

“How £10 clockwork orange ‘legal high’ turned caring mum into deranged Longhill attacker.”

Clearly, that kind of substance is available all around the country and are causing problems for all sorts of communities.

I was also very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who is not in his place at the moment, was able to contribute to the debate, because I know that he is particularly interested in the issue. He hit the nail on the head about the importance of cross-Government working. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) spoke with great passion about the action that is needed now. He made two interesting suggestions: one was about the seizures that could take place at the ports, and the other was about putting the onus on sellers to show that what they are purporting to be bath salts really are bath salts and are not to be consumed.

Many Members across the country have seen a proliferation in the number of head shops opening in the high streets in their constituencies, and we know that those shops are selling dangerous drugs. Obviously, the correct term is “new psychoactive substances”. However, I take the point that the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made that that term is a bit of a mouthful. His idea of calling them “chemical highs” has some merit, because the problem with them being called “legal highs” is that it causes young people, in particular, to view them as being absolutely fine and safe to take.

We know that there is widespread concern among parents and communities about legal highs. Many Members have spoken today about particular cases in their own constituencies. The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) spoke about what was happening in her area, and the hon. Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) talked about their areas. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the important issue of legal highs being used at festivals, which at this time of year is quite an important issue to try to address.

All this activity has been going on for some time, but the Government have been very slow in coming to the table to sort it out. There is now genuinely a call for action from all parties in the House, and the Government need to do something. It was not until December last year that the Minister accepted that the situation was no longer under control, and he instigated the review that has been mentioned. The Opposition have been raising the matter with the former Minister with responsibility for drugs, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), and the current Minister for the past three years. During that time, the UK has become Europe’s largest market for legal highs. We now have more than 500 internet sellers and at least 100 high street shops selling hundreds of substances. We have also heard that more than 650,000 young people in the UK are thought to have taken these substances, on some occasions with tragic consequences.

We know that the problem has been growing exponentially since 2009. In that year, 24 new psychoactive substances were identified in the UK and were linked with 10 deaths, but by 2012 73 drugs had emerged, which were linked to 68 deaths. We know that last year 81 new drugs emerged. I am glad that the Government have now recognised that they can no longer ignore the problem, and although the review is three years too late, I still welcome it. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us when it will be published, so that we can see what the Government’s plans are.

There are four issues about legal highs that I want to raise with the Minister. I want to highlight them and seek assurances from him that they will be addressed in the review and its findings.

The first issue is about information. It is difficult to address a problem when we do not understand or know the full scale of it, but at present we do not have a clear recording system to identify the spread of legal highs. There is no record of those presenting at A and E with complications resulting from legal highs. We do not know how often legal highs are implicated in mental health referrals or in adolescent mental health figures. There is even confusion about the drugs that have been identified as being available in the UK, with the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which is informed by the NHS’s National Poisons Information Service, consistently publishing a much more comprehensive list of substances than the list that the Home Office has on its forensic early warning system. There is a discrepancy in the numbers. Why does the Home Office not use the National Poisons Information Service as its source of information, since its list is more comprehensive? We need a co-ordinated Government strategy. It appears that at the moment one half of Government does not know what information the other half is publishing online. That would be the first step in establishing the baseline of the problem.

Secondly, the Opposition supported the Government in introducing temporary banning orders for new psychoactive substances, but in three years that power has been used just five times, while hundreds of drugs have emerged on the market. The ACMD has been clear that it is not able to assess more than three or four drugs a year. The Minister will say that he has used generic bans to outlaw whole classes—families—of drugs, but I am not convinced that that has worked, as hon. Members have highlighted. We need a new approach to tackling these substances.

Thirdly, it is not just about banning the substances; we now need to tackle an entire industry that has grown up to distribute them. We have heard how head shops behave, particularly the bad example in Chesterfield. Many are deliberately targeting young people, and drugs may be marketed as bath salts or plant food, but that is a thin veneer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness indicated, people will soon recognise that mislabelling when they seek a description of the drug and information about it from those selling it.

[Jim Shannon]

Perhaps the hon. Lady will comment on online purchasing of legal drugs, which I mentioned. Although they are available in shops, as we all know, they are also available online and people can buy them without anyone—their parents or their family— knowing. I regard that as a matter of greater concern.

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Online sale of these substances is worrying. Just this morning I read a description of a drug on pills4party.com:

“DEX powder–new generation of legal high”

produces a

“pure dose of euphoric energy and keeps you charged for all night long. DEX powder is perfect alternative to cocaine that gives you more than the Snowman Experience without any hassles.”

I am sure, Mr Chope, that you are fully aware of what the snowman experience is, although many of us find that rather baffling. That shows how these substances are being marketed for consumption by young people. Nobody can be under any illusion that they are not being marketed as recreational drugs. I have heard of internet sellers sending out free samples of new drugs that have emerged on the market. It seems to me that they are treating our children as guinea pigs.

Until a little while ago, Amazon was selling legal highs on its site, but due to work by the Angelus Foundation I think that it has removed them. Many local authorities have attempted to use trading standards legislation to close head shops down where there is a problem, but such attempts are rarely successful. Indeed, last year a prosecution was thrown out by the judge, who, although sympathetic to the need to close such shops down, said that the legislation simply was not fit for purpose.

One idea, which was used in Leeds, involved solvent legislation, but of course that applies only to selling solvents to someone who is under 18. By extending the solvents legislation, as has been done successfully in Ireland, we could give local authorities the powers they need to close head shops down. I should be grateful if the Minister said what he thought of that idea, which was proposed in an amendment tabled by the Opposition to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill. The Government saw fit not to support that amendment.

I was struck by the menu of ways to tackle the problem that the hon. Member for South Swindon proposed. I hope that the Minister will respond to some of those ideas.

My final point, which I have raised in many debates, is that there should be a proper drugs prevention strategy. The lack of one is the Government’s biggest failure. Legal highs have emerged as a new phenomenon, and the Government have done little to tackle the myths that have allowed those substances to take hold in the past few years. Even after a number of deaths, and the horror stories that we have read about and heard about today, some people still think that “legal” means “safe”. That misconception needs to be tackled head-on.

The Minister will claim to have invested in relaunching the Frank website and even to have launched a public awareness campaign last year, but it was too little, too late. In four years, just £67,000 has been spent on a one-off, limited campaign that generated just 75,000 web page views. That is feeble, when we consider that more than 650,000 young people have tried these substances.

Mr Chope, can I just check that the time for this debate has been extended to 4.15 pm?