Drug Use and Possession: Royal Commission

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on securing this excellent debate. When he introduced it, he said that he was not an expert. I am left with the feeling that I would hate to hear him on his own topics, but of course we hear him on them regularly and we are all the better for that. It was also interesting to hear his blog responses, which informed what he said. I think that they added a touch of absolute certainty about what is happening out there in the real world, which was very useful to hear.

I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say how pleased we are to see the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, in his place. I thank him for his interesting anecdote about “Have I Got News For You”. I must watch that. I had not realised that the noble Earl had been a star of the small screen. It also shows, from what he said, that the public are well ahead of us in some of the things that we think about in this debate.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, reminded us, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 now controls over 600 or so so-called psychoactive substances, of which there seem to be about 40 discovered each year. We have too many regimes and approaches. Alcohol and tobacco are regulated separately, largely through trading standards legislation, while solvents and solvent abuse are regulated through the Intoxicating Substances (Supply) Act 1985. As a number of noble Lords have said, there is no evidence that the level of classification within the Act has any effect on consumption. When cannabis was reclassified downward to class C and then back up again to class B, there was no discernible change in the already downward trend in use.

Penalties for drug possession have a considerable impact on the criminal justice system. Two years ago, over 41,000 people were sentenced for drug possession offences, including over 1,200 people sentenced to immediate custody. Drug use and its associated problems have real and considerable implications for the justice, prison, education, health and mental health systems and, of course, for victims and families and generally for society.

As the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, said, there is a good case for drugs policy being transferred to health and taken away from the Home Office. The Misuse of Drugs Act is now 40 years old and, arguably, ripe for review. The noble Lord, Lord Taverne, gave us an interesting insight into policy as it must have been around the time when the Act was passed. That gives us a chance to argue that a review is required. If the Act is going to be reviewed, there is a list of issues that need to be addressed, including enforceability, which is becoming more and more difficult and bringing the law into disrepute; inconsistency in our approach to controlling illicit and licit psychoactive substances; technology and the fact that new drugs are being developed all the time; criminality, with the huge and growing criminal black market and the associated violence that it brings; and collateral damage, in the sense that drugs and drug use have a significant and growing impact on our education, health and prison systems.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said—and it was a good phrase—we have also to think about the perverse appeal that drugs have for young people. All our evidence is that the educational process at the moment is not effective. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, we have a problem. The issue of decriminalisation has been raised. There is good evidence from other parts of the world that it can have an effect. As my noble friend Lord Rea said when he spoke about his experiences of general practice, there is in some sense a form of decriminalisation effected when people are able to prescribe directly and get around the laws. We obviously need to tackle that, as well.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, a balanced debate is needed—one that considers the impact of prohibition and the potential benefits as well as harms from use and abuse of psychoactive substances. We have to think about the costs involved in this process. This debate could then feed into a complete review of our approach to drug control, with the aim of producing a single, coherent, overarching framework for regulating all psychoactive substances.

If there is a case for a complete review, should it be done by a royal commission? There are those who feel that a royal commission just means a whole lot of people with letters after their names taking several years and spending a lot of public money just to tell us what we already know—so maybe not a royal commission. Should it be done by Parliament? One problem is that our political and legislative systems contain what has been described as a fundamental bias in favour of the prohibition of drugs. It has been persuasively argued that politicians find it very hard to deal with these social issues in any case. Even so, there is a case for this matter to be referred to Parliament, possibly through a Joint Committee of the two Houses and subsequent pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government are presumably nearing the end of their drug strategy consultation. Perhaps the Minister can shed some light on progress with this and, in so doing, indicate which of these options—royal commission or Parliament—she favours. As the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said, we are already in the long grass, so let us not leave ourselves there for much longer. Judging from the evidence that we have heard tonight, something clearly has to happen soon.