Drugs

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I join those who pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, not only for the way she introduced this debate but for the consistent and effective work she does on this subject. She is becoming a leading figure internationally in her commitment. I was sorry to miss the first sentence of her speech because I totally misunderstood that the previous business would wrap up as quickly as it did.

I am always impressed by those working on the front line on the drugs issue, and I wish we in Parliament could find ways of listening to such people more directly. I certainly learnt a great deal when I was serving under the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on Sub-Committee F which a couple of years ago did a report on this subject. It is worth reading, not least for the evidence in the report which comes from those on the front line. I thank those in the front line for the tremendous help they have given me in clearing my thoughts and focusing for this debate.

I understand that there are moves among the Liberal Democrats to shift the drugs lead from the Home Office to the Department of Health. If so, that is immensely encouraging. I think we should all cheer that, if it is happening. I hope that other parties will be able to follow suit. The same call should be made to move the brief internationally from the UN Office for Drugs and Crime to the World Health Organisation.

This is no longer a theoretical debate. Regulation is happening now. Cannabis has been legalised in Washington state, Colorado and Uruguay. Each year that the war on drugs continues, we spend £60 billion to create an illegal drugs market with a turnover of £200 billion.

Senator John McCain, not well known for his liberal views, now supports legalising cannabis. The most recent national convert to legalise cannabis for medical use is Romania—again, not known for its liberal positions as a whole. Half the world’s opium is grown for the legal opiates market; 3,500 acres is grown in the UK. None of it attracts the attention of organised crime or the Taliban. No drug is made safer left in the hands of organised criminals and unregulated dealers. Mike Barton, chief constable of Durham and lead on intelligence for ACPO, recently called for the drug supply to be taken over by the NHS. We cannot continue to allow the world’s drug policy to be determined by our special relationship. It must be determined by UN principles, health, security, development and human rights. These are not supported by prohibition.

There are in fact two wars on drugs. The first is the misguided overconcentration on attempting to rid the world of certain drugs—not, incidentally, the biggest killers; those are overwhelmingly tobacco and alcohol. The second is the war against the organised criminals who profit from the unintended consequence of prohibition, namely the creation of the second largest income stream for organised criminals: illegal drugs.

There is a significant point in Sub-Committee F’s report. Part of this war results often in the trade being displaced, and previously unaffected countries and communities being drawn in, sometimes with the most appalling human rights consequences. We need to take that seriously.

As with alcohol prohibition in the US, there is only one way to end this madness: ending the prohibition and replacing it with a system of responsible regulation. This must mean placing drugs under the control of doctors, pharmacists and strictly licensed retailers. Successive Administrations have continued to spend taxpayers’ money on a system of criminalisation that has never been subject to evaluation. Despite being promised an evaluation in 2010, we have still not seen one from the Government.

I am personally highly dubious about whether the Home Office has any real idea of what has resulted, positively, from the £100 billion expenditure. Legalising and regulating heroin would mean that Afghanistan no longer produced heroin for the non-medical market. What we are talking about here is the potential transformation of international relations, enabling developing countries, especially those involved in drug production and supply, to extricate themselves from the nightmare of prohibition and aspire to the same goals that we all do. Imagine reallocating £60 billion annually to development, rather than spreading crime, misery, stigma and blood-borne viruses.