Addiction: England and Wales

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lord, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, on securing time for this important debate. Sadly, it appears to be the practice of your Lordships’ House that debates on some of the most important issues facing us as a society, such as the subject we are debating today, are allocated the shortest time slots. This is a great pity.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked about trends in different types of addiction in England and Wales. I want to focus on only one trend, and that is the increasing use of synthetic cannabinoid substances, often known collectively as Spice. The use of these frighteningly dangerous drugs, which come in a variety of forms or brands, is wreaking havoc in our society. There is an urgent need for the Government to take them far more seriously than they have been. This is not only because of the increasing demand which the users of these substances are making on scarce local policing resources—in which I have a special interest—but, more importantly, because of the effect which these drugs are having on the lives of so many of our young people.

Police and crime commissioners up and down the country are seeing the horrifying effects of these substances on both police resources and public health every day of the year. That was why, about a month ago, on 28 August, all 20 Conservative police and crime commissioners, led by Marc Jones, the PCC for Lincolnshire, wrote a letter to the Home Secretary expressing concern about Spice and urging that it be reclassified as a class A drug. As they wrote in their letter:

“The wide scale abuse of these debilitating drugs within towns, cities and even villages across the UK is one of the most severe public health issues we have faced in decades and presently the response to tackle the issue is woefully inadequate … Spice simply put is a significant risk to our society and must be tackled effectively and with expediency”.


As I am sure everyone participating in this debate will know, Spice is a relatively new threat to our society. Because of its chemical composition, it is often seen and presented by interested agencies as an alternative version of cannabis. Looking at it this way is both misleading and dangerous. The effects of Spice are much worse for both the individual and society. Often referred to as zombie drugs, these substances have incapacitating and unpredictable psychoactive effects on those who take them. Users are increasingly seen slumped on the streets in a state of semi-consciousness, often passed out, sometimes aggressive and always highly unpredictable.

Spice does not only affect behaviour in these ways. It also costs lives. According to the Office for National Statistics, Spice has been linked to 27 deaths in 2016, and there is no reason to expect anything but an increase in the number of Spice-related deaths as the years go by. Clearly Spice must be given more attention by all agencies of government, both national and local.

As I said, the present justification for classifying Spice as a class B drug is rooted in its chemical composition and the similarities between Spice and cannabis but, as I also said, the physical and psychological effects that spice has on its users are much more extreme than those of cannabis. They are more comparable to class A drugs such as heroin, and it is therefore imperative that spice and the dealers who peddle it are treated with the same severity and concern as those who peddle heroin.

It is also vital—this is key—that the level of support to those hooked on Spice is equal to that for those hooked on heroin. This includes providing pathways away from criminalising the vulnerable, where possible, and ensuring that appropriate services are in place to treat their addiction. In an interesting speech in another place on 23 July, my honourable friend Ben Bradley said that Spice addicts often turn to heroin, not only because it is less debilitating, but because they know that there are services in place to assist addicts to break their heroin habit. This cannot be right. We cannot allow a situation to develop in this country where Spice addicts turn to heroin to get the help they need. We must recognise Spice for what it is—a dangerous substance that destroys human lives and devastates whole communities. We must listen to the cries for help from those addicted to Spice and from the police and crime commissioners who are trying so hard to help them.

Reclassifying Spice as a category A drug will not by itself solve the problem, but it will demonstrate that the Government understand the nature of the problem. As we all know, understanding a problem is a necessary first step to solving it.