Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2022

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

We support the amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and thank the Minister for introducing so comprehensively the details of the changes proposed. Just to remind the Committee, I sit as a magistrate and regularly deal with drug-related matters in all the jurisdictions—in youth, family and adult criminal matters. It is normal for me, when dealing with these matters, to notice that the street names of drugs change, the names recorded on the charge sheets change, and the strengths of the drugs that we are dealing with change as well. It is a moving picture; I understand the purpose of this amendment, but I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that in a sense the system is always playing catch-up with what is happening with illegal drug use.

I thought it might be interesting for the Committee if I told an anecdote about when I was sitting as a magistrate in Horseferry Road about 10 years ago. We were in a regular criminal court and we had a young man in front of us—he was an adult in his early 20s. He had his father in court, and a privately paid lawyer, and he was pleading guilty to possession of a class B drug. That drug had only recently been made illegal; it had previously been a legal drug, and he had become addicted to it. He had dropped out of college and been put on a rehabilitation programme. He was doing better—but he had been picked up in possession of the drug, and that was the matter that he was pleading guilty to.

What nobody else in the court knew except me was that our legal adviser, before she became a legal adviser, was a nurse. She googled the drug referred to and asked us to retire. She told us that the drug that he had been found in possession of was a date-rape drug, which we had been told he was addicted to. In fact, we had had it presented to us that he was a victim in unfortunate circumstances. So we had to decide how to proceed, given that potentially, given the information that we had been given, it was a much more serious matter than simple possession of a drug.

In the end, we sentenced the man for simple possession, but we got the legal adviser to go and tell the young man’s lawyer—not his father—that we knew what that drug could be used for. When we went back into court and sentenced him—and he would only have got a fine, or something—we made it very clear that there can be other connotations for people having these drugs, and things can get much more serious. In fact, the legal adviser suggested that we might send the matter up to Crown Court, although we did not do that in the end.

I support these amendments. I know that there are limitations with what is happening, and I understand the points that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made—and I agree with his points about education being better than criminalisation, although I part company with him on a number of other aspects of legalisation of certain types of drugs. Nevertheless, I welcome these amendments to the drugs Act.