Draft Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2017

Martyn Day Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 General Committees

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I only have a few brief comments to make. I do not think this is controversial in the slightest—almost unpronounceable, but not controversial.

I am strongly of the opinion that all drugs policy should be devolved to Scotland, where we already have control of health and justice. It would be a vital link in our tools to allow us to have full powers over harm reduction, so that we can deal with declassification, decriminalisation and even regulation.

The drugs problem in Scotland costs us around £3.5 billion per year. Drug-related deaths in Scotland are running at a rate approximately two and a half times that of the rest of the UK. This particular substance—I will simply refer to it as MPA, because I can pronounce that—has contributed at least 10 of those deaths. On that basis, I am happy to support the order.

I sound one note of caution. We spent a fair amount of time in the last Parliament putting through the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. I wonder about its effectiveness, given that we are not using that route today.