Legal Highs

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. May I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) on introducing this important debate? He set out very effectively the nature of the problem, the size of the market, the number of deaths and the policy challenges.

The debate has been a rather rare one for this place. Many of us have learned a great deal about an issue we were not very familiar with—I was certainly pretty much unaware of it. Much like my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), I had the issue drawn to my attention at a meeting with a constituent. Richard Smith came to talk to me a couple of months ago about his son, who had started using legal highs. He talked about the disruption to his life, the cost to the family in terms of relationship breakdown, and the money his son was spending. He drew my attention to the fact that, in the early days, these products were readily available over the internet, and were also available on market stalls. However, like the hon. Member for Chesterfield, he pointed out that these products have become mainstream and are now drifting into the high street.

My constituent drew my attention to a shop in Leamington Spa, a leafy town in Warwickshire that is very pleasant. It is in the main high street—the Parade—with Laura Ashley and Austin Reed nearby. It is called Planet Bong and has an entry in the business improvement district company directory. It is described as

“a funky ethical Fairtrade store specialising in alternative…Fairtrade fashion…All influenced by Fairtrade practices”.

Yet that is where legal highs are readily and easily available. It shows how the issue has moved on.

My constituent also drew my attention to the way in which chemists who manufacture the product stay one step ahead of legislators. The Minister has I think described this as a “race with chemists”, and I am sure that he will discuss how society can start to win that race. After becoming aware of the situation their son was in, my constituents looked for support in the usual places. They went to the health service and looked at what was available through education. Much as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South found, support was lacking, absent or inadequate.

My constituent believes that much of the problem is that the people who use the products do not see themselves as victims in the way that the users of more conventional illegal drugs do. They are enjoying what they see as a recreational product and are often completely unaware of the dangers, or of deaths such as those we have heard about. They do not understand where use of the products may take them, and as a consequence they do not present themselves at more conventional drug treatment centres.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend concerned to hear that a constituent of mine who wrote to me on this issue said that it says on product labels, “not fit for human consumption”? No one seems to read that. People who are not users who go into the shop in Newton Abbot are horrified at the risk to their children.

[Mark Pawsey]

It is part of youth’s belief in its invincibility. People take those products, believing that because they are young, their bodies are resistant, and they can deal with those things without a massively detrimental effect. How wrong can they be?

Another issue is the use of the term “legal high”, and the conclusions that it leads people to. If something is legal, they think it will perhaps do them no harm. If it is legal, why should they not do it? What should prevent them? The long and the short of it is that my constituent, frustrated at the lack of support available to his son, and concerned about others who might be dragged into using those products, identified a gap. He answered the question “What can be done about it?” by doing something himself: he set up his own company offering education and harm reduction advice. He set up five programmes, the first of which is called Legal Highs Game Over. It is a national awareness and harm reduction campaign targeting social media. It has a YouTube video and Facebook page, it is on Twitter, and there are posters. It addresses exactly the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South made about where young people now get advice and information.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about education and the role of the media. Does he agree that the media have a key role in making people aware of the dangers of such substances? My local paper, the Medway Messenger, ran a campaign on the effect and consequences of such highs, and other papers should do the same, to make people aware.

[Mark Pawsey]

My hon. Friend is right—we need to raise awareness; but we should not use the term “legal high” when we do so. In this place, and in all work that is done on the matter, we need to start using the term “new psychoactive substances” rather than an expression that includes the word “legal”.

[Mr Buckland]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s valiant attempt, but I worry that that is a bit of a mouthful. I prefer the term “chemical high”, which sums up where we are and does not place undue emphasis on the word “legal”.

[Mark Pawsey]

I am more than happy to adopt the expression used by my hon. Friend. The issue that I am raising is the use of the word “legal”; we must get away from using it when we talk about the issue.

[Toby Perkins]

I do not want to engage in a debate entirely about semantics, but would the hon. Gentleman consider that the very fact that we allow products to continue to be legal when they kill people is shaming to us all? Should not that prick our consciences, because we have failed to take the action we should to make them illegal?

[Mark Pawsey]

That is a matter for the Minister, and it will be interesting to hear what steps the Government will take.

The second of my constituent’s projects is Street Aware, a programme of targeted drugs education in schools that draws attention to the danger of substance misuse. The third is called Times Up and it is about issues to do with substance misuse in criminal justice settings such as police custody suites, probation hostels and custodial institutions. My constituent draws attention to the use of such products in the night-time economy, with a project called Last Orders, dealing with their use in conjunction with alcohol. I think that there is a sense among young people that it is fairly normal to use them while out drinking, particularly given that the products in question are not illegal. Finally, Health Call is a health-based drug and alcohol education and awareness programme, designed for health services, so that health professionals who come across people who exhibit behavioural difficulties can identify whether the products we are concerned with have been used. I hope that the work of my constituent will improve understanding, and that the Minister will support his initiatives.