Cannabis

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

I have not been to Northern Ireland to discuss this, but I went to the Oireachtas a number of years ago following a report on this issue; there were terrible problems with the criminal market in Dublin, as the hon. Lady will know.

What we are against is the fact that we have a substance of great popularity, used by millions of people, but the market for it is controlled by irresponsible criminals with little regard for the results for customers. They do not pay taxes. We have an empire of criminals building up throughout the world, exploiting their customers. The sensible way forward is to replace that market with one that is run by the state, has strong controls and does as much as it can to keep drugs out of the hands of vulnerable people, including those with mental health problems, the young, pregnant women and so on. No one is asking for free-for-all drug use; we are asking for an intelligent system that can be run and controlled.

It is ludicrous that these drugs should be known as “controlled” drugs when they are totally out of control. I have had constituents come to me and say, “Well, I thought it was legalised anyway.” The police are now very reluctant to arrest for these minor offences. It is many years since a case of someone using cannabis medicinally has been taken to court, because the juries are refusing to convict and it is a waste of everyone’s time, but that is still the law—the law supported by those who are against legalisation here.

If we can take the control of the drugs trade out of the hands of criminals, it will be an all-round improvement. That is what is happening elsewhere in the world. I mentioned the United States, but it is also going on throughout south America. A number of groups have come here recently from Mexico, Honduras and Bolivia to talk with the all-party groups about their revulsion at the drugs state and the terrible effect it has had on their countries. They were the producers, but the problems were in downtown Chicago; the consumers were on the other side. The most serious problems of drug trafficking and warfare involved people in south America.

One major benefit for countries—particularly Mexico—that border the United States, where they have seen the control of drugs taken into the hands of the state, is that there is less trafficking. Fewer drugs are going across the border, which will be a benefit.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend describes some quite exotic places, but I want to give an example from the Recovery Interventions Service Ealing, a drug and alcohol support service in my constituency. RISE put the point to me that these things are often about working smarter, not harder. It might be about not necessarily being punitive, but looking at joined-up thinking with other agencies. RISE has a joint working initiative with the West London Mental Health Trust to reduce harm, because it reports that the strength of some varieties of this drug—particularly skunk—is higher than it was 10 or 20 years ago. It has joint risk assessments, wrap-around treatment, and database and information sharing with other agencies. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a good way forward?

[Paul Flynn]

A great deal of good work has been done by the agencies and those who work in this area. The previous MP who ran the all-party group on drug misuse in this country pointed out that there is an establishment of people who are involved and have a vested interest in drug prohibition. He went every year to a group who were helping people with drug problems, but he noticed in his 15 years in Parliament that there were more people coming every year.

Great work is being done, and it will always need to be done to rehabilitate people who are afflicted by drug addiction. One accepts that, but what has taken place in this country and throughout the world in the past 45 years of prohibition is hugely increased drug use. It is going down now, because of the matter to which the Chair referred at the beginning of the sitting: young people are obsessed with the new addiction of playing with their iPhones and iPads. They do not have time to roll a reefer. That is the new addiction, and it has a beneficial effect. That is the fashion throughout the world, and it probably does not do them much harm. The Home Office has admitted that there is no correlation between harsh punishment, harsh penalties and the use of drugs. It is entirely to do with fashion and what young people regard as acceptable and what they regard as naff.

We imagine that we can control what is going on, but we cannot. The whole process is out of control. Holland has given us a fine example over the past 40 years by de-penalising cannabis use. Now and for nearly all that period, cannabis use in Holland has been far less than here in the United Kingdom. There is a good reason for that: people in Holland can go to any coffee shop and have a cannabis cake with their grandmother. Where is the fun in that? They have taken away the allure of forbidden fruit.

In America, groups of young former hippies were sent out to the sticks to deter drug use. At that time, drug use was rampant in cities, but not in rural areas, so these attractive, long-haired hippies went there with guitars and said, “We’ve been subject to degradation. We’ve been through hell. We’ve been through sexual orgies. It was terrible. For goodness sake, don’t do drugs.” Their message was: “Drugs are dangerous. They will upset your parents and destroy your health”—rather forgetting that young people all know that they are immortal. Danger is an attraction, as is upsetting their parents and establishing their own identity, and drug use followed the drug education programme as surely as night follows day. This futile experiment, lasting 45 years, should now come to an end.

Let me give just one example of what has happened. People in America suggested that if cannabis were decriminalised for recreational purposes, there would be all kinds of consequences, but in Colorado and Washington, decriminalisation of recreational drugs took place a year ago, and the disasters have not occurred. The evidence shows no spike in cannabis use among young people and no increase in road fatalities. What there has been, of course, is a large reduction in the criminal market because the state now runs 60% of the market. In Colorado, they are nearing control. If the state government decides that problems are emerging, they can change things, because they pull the levers. They can decide what happens, instead of allowing criminals to use their drugs freely and sell them irresponsibly to build up their criminal networks, as happens in Northern Ireland, or to sell them to people whose mental health is fragile.