Drugs Policy

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Ross]

I know that my hon. Friend and I disagreed in our last debate on UK drugs policy in Westminster Hall. These are not my conclusions, but those of a national report that has looked into the policies of the Scottish Government and said that, however well-meant the policies are, they have

“not prevented substantial increases in opioid-related deaths in Scotland.”

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Douglas Ross]

I am sorry—I have given way a few times, and I know that a number of Members wish to speak.

We need an approach to addiction that is more ambitious than methadone and take-home naloxone, and certainly more ambitious than self-injection rooms. We need an approach that puts recovery first, but we need to tackle addiction and the drugs trade together, because there are no victimless crimes in drugs. We cannot simply separate it into matters of public health and criminal justice, because recreational use, addiction, exploitation by gangs and suppliers, and the supply chains of drugs into and across the country are all bound together.

If we want to give people the best chance of recovery from addiction, we have to tackle the supply chains. That means enforcing the law properly, not soft-touch sentencing and back-door decriminalisation. By making it harder to import, produce, supply and possess drugs, we make it easier to get off drugs and overcome addiction. From the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 to the new financial crime unit to seize the assets of drug lords, and to the recently announced review into the link between the drug market and violent crime, the UK Government have demonstrated that they recognise that. I only hope that the Scottish Government recognise it too, and act before the crisis gets any worse.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing this important debate.

I think the tide is turning in terms of people’s willingness to look at the evidence, whatever preconceived ideas they have. I must admit that I am a convert; I have looked at the evidence and realised that what we have been doing for the last 50 years is not working. I have been out with the police on drug raids in my constituency. I have seen the effects in older industrial areas where these problems are manifesting. We need a new approach.

I will focus my remarks on one issue, which the hon. Member for Inverclyde has already touched on, that I would like the Minister to consider: consumption rooms. I am looking for the Minister and the Home Office to empower and resource police and crime commissioners, and allow them to take some progressive actions and interventions. For example, in pilot areas, where there is support for such an initiative, there could be medically supervised consumption rooms to treat addicts and reduce crime.

For members of the public who may be alarmed at that prospect and are unsure what a drug consumption room is, it is a supervised clinical environment where people with a diagnosed drug addiction are provided with medical-grade heroin, clean equipment and facilities to safely dispose of used needles. In debates in public and in this place, they have been unfairly characterised by opponents and, more disappointingly, by organisations such as the BBC, which I would hope would take a more careful and considered view on the use of such terminology, as “shooting galleries”.

[Mr Sweeney]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the effectiveness of safe drug consumption rooms—a critical issue for my constituency, where the drug-related death rate is 1,000% higher than the EU average. Glasgow also has an HIV epidemic. Does he agree that there is a real concern that correlation may be confused with causation? Much of the evidence that has been cited to show that safe drug consumption rooms are not effective does not necessarily show that.

[Grahame Morris]

It is really important that policy be evidence-based. With all due respect to the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), many of whose concerns I share, shooting galleries do exist. We might not like it, but they exist, unauthorised and under no medical supervision, in our communities, in private dwellings, in derelict properties, in residential areas, near schools and behind shops. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing the debate. The UK does not operate alone, and neither do global drugs control policies. The UK Government, as a fully paid-up member of UN treaties, must acknowledge and take ownership of the failure of global drugs control policies and the harms that are done in its name—the so-called war on drugs. It is actually a war on the people who use drugs, because it is they who feel the sharp end of prohibition. Some 26 countries have made changes to domestic laws and policies concerning the possession of illicit drugs for personal use in order to protect their citizens, but the UK lags behind.

It is not really a war on drugs; it is a war on citizens’ behaviour, and it is most often delivered by the state against the poorest people and communities. We do not put drugs in prisons; we put people in prisons. We allow the market to regulate itself because we simply prohibit drugs. It is a market, and it will not go away or be managed by simply investing in more police or in border control efforts—it is like trying to make gravity illegal. We cannot be naive and seriously think that there is any way forward but to reform policies to make them fit for today.

That brings me to the long-standing issue of the Glasgow safer drug consumption facility and heroin-assisted treatment pilot project, which has cross-party support in the city, certainly from Labour and the Scottish National party. As hon. Members might be aware, the issue of drug use and drug-related mortality in Glasgow is particularly acute. It is a problem that necessitates radical and disruptive new approaches. Almost a third—267—of Scotland’s drug-related deaths in 2016 occurred in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area. In Glasgow there are 283 drug-related deaths per 1 million people—an appalling 1,315% higher than the EU average. There are 13,600 people aged between 15 and 64 in the Glasgow City Council area who are problematic drug users, which is twice the national average in Scotland.

That is why the safe drug consumption and heroin-assisted treatment proposal is vital for our city, to improve its public health performance in this area. I met the Minister recently and we had a productive discussion about the issue of safe drug consumption rooms and heroin-assisted treatment. Although we disagree on the safe drug consumption room pilot, primarily over assurances about the safety of the substances that are brought into the facility, I propose that there are methods of testing the substances prior to their being used on the premises, but that is beside the point. I want to focus on where there is a possibility of moving forward in the short term to deal with this pressing issue in Glasgow.

I want to ask the Minister whether she can outline more robust measures to improve and expedite the heroin-assisted treatment pilot programme. How can we get that on the ground and move it forward? I want to see people being able to use drug-related equipment in a safe environment and in a way that can be controlled, and I want the substances that they are using to be assured. That is the only way that we will make an impact on the ground in Glasgow and the only way that we will be able to address the appalling level of drug-related deaths. I would like to focus on the heroin-assisted treatment side of the proposed pilot in Glasgow. Let us focus on delivering something on the ground within the next year—let us get it on the ground and do something as a starting point at least. Will the Minister elaborate on how she can do that?