Drugs Policy

Debate between Paul Flynn and Bob Ainsworth

Thursday 16th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ainsworth]

No, I do not agree, and those figures will not bear scrutiny. That is what we ought to do—scrutinise what the hon. Gentleman has just said. We ought to bring some reason to bear, rather than make simple allegations and claims.

Everyone said that, when we reclassified, cannabis use would go through the roof. There is utterly and absolutely no evidence for that—quite the reverse. Cannabis use, according to all the evidence that I have seen and heard—others are far bigger experts than I am—went down in that period. The reclassification had no impact. When we reclassified cannabis back to class B, it had no impact again. All the scaremongering about the reclassification of cannabis was uncalled for and proved to be incorrect.

Cocaine use, however, has gone up, because that has been the fashionable drug in recent years—it is a darn sight more dangerous than cannabis. Cocaine use has gone up, but we never reclassified cocaine. If the hon. Gentleman is positing an argument for reclassification making an ounce of difference to the levels of use, he is in real trouble.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his courage and vision, and it is a pleasure to be here today. Does he not agree, having heard the nonsensical intervention from the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), that the classifications have almost nothing to do with use of the drug concerned? A huge amount of energy has been spent talking about and legislating on the classifications, but the real tragedy is that in every year of the past 39 years, the waste of lives in Britain has increased, from 1,000 addicts in 1971 to 320,000 now. We have the worst outcomes and the harshest penalties of any country in Europe. Does he not agree that there must be a better way?

[Mr Ainsworth]

I will move on to some of those issues later in my speech. The only point on which I disagree with my hon. Friend is his use of the term “nonsensical”, because we really must get away from flinging insults when discussing the matter. In the days ahead, many insults will be flung at me by sections of the right-wing press, which I knew would happen when I raised the subject, but it will be a great shame if we cannot have a more serious debate on that most serious issue.

I have had some busy jobs in the past few years and so might not be as current as I was a short time ago, but I have always argued that the regulatory framework adopted in different countries makes little difference to their levels of drug use. Sweden has a hard attitude to drugs and relatively low drug use. Italy has a softer attitude and relatively low drug use. We have a very hard attitude and relatively high drug use. Holland has a relatively liberal regime and a high incidence of drug use. That tells us that the regulatory framework has little effect on the levels of drug use in those countries.