Drugs Policy

Debate between Paul Flynn and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt]

It has not failed. If we adjust one part of the system and move from a categorisation of B to C, as we did with cannabis, then that sends a message about usage and the rest. However, if the supply of cannabis is in the hands of people who are not going to tell people what is in it, or educate them as to the effect it is going to have on their mind, it is hardly surprising that we see a massive increase in schizophrenia caused by the use of these drugs, because people do not know what they are buying and we are not in a position to educate them properly about the consequences of their use. That is why there is a public health issue about getting a regulated supply into place whereby we could educate people at the point of purchase. I will come on to talk about the relationship between the dealer and his interest in how he deals with his client base in a regulated and licensed system.

[Paul Flynn]

Having been in the House at the time of David Blunkett’s change in the category of cannabis, and very much involved with it, I remember that everyone predicted an increase in cannabis use when the classification was changed. That did not happen. In fact, there was a reduction in the use of cannabis when the penalties were less. Contrary to all the expectations, and the great argument we hear in this place, it is not the drugs that are killing people—it is prohibition that is killing people.

[Crispin Blunt]

While I am obviously minded to agree with the hon. Gentleman, the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) and the Government are putting forward in trying to send a message should be considered somewhere so that we can go through the evidence. That is very difficult to do in a charged environment where the tabloid press will be seeking to send a message if we are perceived to be weak in this area of public policy. Yet hundreds of thousands of people across the world are dying because this policy is in the wrong place globally. I rather hope that a royal commission here in the United Kingdom could assist us in getting to a place where, based on evidence, we can begin to lead the international debate.

As well as the decriminalisation of personal possession, we ought to consider the merits of a legal, regulated market taken out of the control of organised crime. A recent report by the drugs policy think-tank Volteface makes the case for a legal, regulated cannabis market in the UK to improve support, guidance and access to treatment for people experiencing problematic cannabis use. It found that the current illegal and unregulated market means that cannabis users are hidden from health practitioners, leaving them

“fumbling around in the dark trying to find them”.

Among people showing signs of cannabis dependence, only 14.6% have ever received treatment, help or support specifically because of their drug use, and 5.5% had received it in the previous six months. The report says a regulated market would provide

“opportunities for more public guidance, packaging controls, products which vary in potency, research into cannabis culture and consumption to improve interventions, and reduced stigma to enable access to services.”

I am sorry to say that the drug dealers reading the strategy and watching this debate will simply laugh at us. We are doing nothing to undermine their basic business model. By ensuring that supply is criminal, we have created a highly lucrative, criminal black market for the distribution and sale of drugs, worth an estimated £4.6 billion per year in the United Kingdom—and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and Europol estimate that the global market is worth $435 billion a year. That is an astonishing amount of money, and it is hardly surprising that people arm themselves, and fight and kill, to try to maintain their share of that market.

Drugs are believed to account for some 20% of all crime proceeds, with about 50% of all organised crime groups believed to be involved in drugs, and about half of transnational organised crime proceeds derive from the drugs trade. Profit margins are enormous, with 100-fold increases in price from production to retail. Exploited customers, trapped in addiction—indeed, having been encouraged and incentivised there by the criminal dealer—turn to crime to pay the inflated prices. Those using heroin, cocaine or crack cocaine are estimated to commit between a third and a half of all acquisitive crime. Drug dealers vie with one another to gain market exclusivity in their domains, leading to further appalling gang violence.

Yet that is only part of the story, as the uncomfortable truth is that respect for our laws is diminished when large swathes of the population can see no difference between their recreational drugs of choice and their recreational use of alcohol and tobacco. Alcohol prohibition was an acknowledged public policy disaster when it was tried in the United States in the 1920s. If the state or its licensed agents became a benign, regulated monopoly supplier instead, that would smash the drug dealer’s business model. Proceeds from sales or taxation of sales would pay for treatment and public health education. We would protect people because they would know what they were buying.

Instead of more of the same, we should be brave enough to be at the forefront of international thinking. Legalisation, licensing and regulation may be radical ideas for the United Kingdom, but forms of decriminalisation are already being widely put into practice in Europe and in North America and Latin America. The merits of other countries’ approaches, and the extensive work of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, warrant proper consideration in British public debate and policy making. A royal commission would be able to do that. It would be the most appropriate way to consider fully and carefully the complex issues involved and all the policy options, exploring best practice abroad and responding to increasing calls here and internationally for a truly new strategy.

Afghanistan

Debate between Paul Flynn and Crispin Blunt

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Crispin Blunt]

We should take the trouble to understand why Iran behaves as it does. Why does it have the relationship it does with Hezbollah? What interests are served by its supporting what we have proscribed as a terrorist group in Lebanon? What is its relationship with the Assad regime, its neighbours in Afghanistan, and the rest? We must add to that the complexity of the whole existing Iranian political set-up. We ought not simply to deal with things in black and white. The world is all shades of grey, and all the actors playing into the drama that led into Afghanistan had their interests.

Our failure in all instances to turn the board around and understand the perspective of the other players in the drama led us into a series of decisions that were, overall, catastrophic for the British national interest, with 453 dead soldiers as a consequence and al-Qaeda replaced in Afghanistan by the forces of Islamic State. Those are beginning to emerge in Helmand, as parts of what was the Taliban appear to be changing sides and declaring allegiance to it. Goodness knows what that will mean for the future of Afghanistan.

From the decisions of 2001 through to those leading to the military campaign in Helmand, what was Dr Reid —now Lord Reid—doing as Defence Secretary, along with the Prime Minister, at the NATO summit in 2005? Who was trying to drive a new role for NATO—some new justification for NATO’s role? When the United Kingdom picked up responsibility for drugs policy in Afghanistan at the 2002 conference, that was the moment at which the west decided we were going to try to create Switzerland in the Hindu Kush, and the nations of the west took up differing responsibilities for helping Afghanistan in various ways. Why did people not properly understand what happened to poppy cultivation in Helmand between 2001 and 2004, which led to our feeling that there was a role for the United Kingdom there? Then, with all the tragic military mis-appreciation that my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury referred to, we went in with a wholly inadequate military force, with an objective that frankly could not in the end be achieved with 10 times as many troops.

There are so many issues to examine from the Afghan disaster that it can only be right, even though one trembles at the expense and time that it would take, to hold a proper inquiry. Its terms of reference should give it enough resources to do the job in reasonable order. It would cost a lot of money, but we owe it to 453 of our servicemen who did not return alive from Afghanistan, as well as all those who served there and were grievously injured in the process. Because of the fantastic medical contribution that was made there, there are many more such people than would have been associated with other conflicts.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not feel that after the endless Chilcot inquiry, which has been delayed and delayed, and the Saville inquiry, which took 10 years to report on the events of a single afternoon, it is a matter of urgency that we look at an inquiry into the decision to go into Helmand, made in the hope that not a shot would be fired? That decision changed the situation from one in which just half a dozen of our soldiers died in combat to one in which 453 died. Should we not be urgently told the truth of what happened, so that we will be informed in respect of future decisions to go to war?

[Crispin Blunt]

Frankly, I would support a very narrow inquiry into the Helmand decision, but that would not do justice to the entire sweep of events and exactly what happened. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, that is the key moment, but there is a strategic analysis that then has to join up with all the other elements of defence policy that have gone on.

We owe it to the soldiers, sailors and airmen who have been sent into combat on our behalf, and to their families, to have a proper understanding of how we got into this and of the circumstances in which we are getting out, and properly to learn the lessons from what, frankly, has been an unqualified disaster for the United Kingdom.

UK Drugs Policy

Debate between Paul Flynn and Crispin Blunt

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn]

Indeed, and I would like to get on to that. We have just been involved in a war, which I mentioned at business questions. We went into Helmand province five years after we went into Afghanistan. We had lost only two soldiers by that time, but our main purpose in going in—hon. Members should read the speeches from 2006; I have just put them on the website—was all about stopping heroin being grown and ending the drug crop. In 2006, 90% of our heroin came from Afghanistan; yet here we are, years later, and 90% of our heroin still comes from Afghanistan. There is a difference, however: now it is cheaper because there is more of it. The efforts to control it were utterly futile, yet there is a shortage of morphine throughout the world—another issue that we have not addressed.

I come back to the point that we should look at the chemistry. Nobody knows what the effect of the various ingredients of natural cannabis is. It might well be that ingredient No. 36 neutralises ingredient No. 428. We do not know, and by stopping people having a natural drug that has proved to be beneficial, we are imposing torment on many who have serious problems, such as multiple sclerosis and other diseases that we know can be cured. It is prejudice that has driven our policies for all these years. I am heartened today by the Minister, by his courage and by the report, which is the only report—I repeat: we have waited 43 years for this—that is based on the truth and the evidence. Marvellous things are happening in other countries throughout the world, and there is a recognition that prohibition has been a curse.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

In the litany of good signs that the hon. Gentleman is seeing, I am quite certain that he will have read the article by Sir William Patey, who was our ambassador in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2012. He says:

“For the sake of both Afghans and British citizens, senior politicians must take responsibility for the failings of global prohibition, and take control of the drug trade through legal regulation.”

When someone like him says that, it is another reason to sit up and take notice.

[Paul Flynn]

That is absolutely right. We are following what happened with the prohibition of alcohol in America, where the deaths came from the use of distilled spirit. The content could not be controlled, and it was poisonous. We now have people taking drugs—often in the most concentrated form and in the most dangerous way—that are produced by people who are irresponsible. I believe that if we did not have prohibition, people would be using heroin beer and other things by now. In Amsterdam, they take their cannabis without smoking, because the danger—as with tobacco, where it is not the nicotine—is in smoking the substance. The best way would be if we relaxed about this and if people could have their drugs of choice—all dangerous and to be avoided if at all possible, but we cannot stop people seeking relaxation and comfort from drugs; that will go on. The way to do it is to end prohibition and for a courageous Government to reform our laws.