My Lords, to explain the background to the comments that I am about to make, as most noble Lords will know I was a police officer for over 30 years and have seen things from the enforcement side. However, a few months ago a former partner of mine in his early 40s, to whom I was still very close, took an overdose of an illegal drug and died. Hopefully, noble Lords will realise that I am not biased one way or the other on this issue, bearing in mind recent events.
Obviously, I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue, and I therefore welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. However, I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee that this is not the way to reduce harm. My professional experience has taught me that young people in particular—though, as I say, my former partner was not particularly young, but then everything is relative—take no account of whether or not a drug is illegal, particularly bearing in mind the discredit that has been cast on the system of drug classification, where very harmful drugs are in a lower category and far less harmful drugs are in a higher one. They certainly do not pay any attention to what class any illegal drug might be. As far as I see it, the evidence that cannabis use has been reducing, for example, is the result of information in the media about potential harmful medical effects of cannabis. That is what has really had an effect on people’s attitude towards that drug, not whether or not it is illegal or indeed what class of illegality it is in.
This is a very difficult issue to deal with. As we know, particularly with regard to legislating, all that the manufacturers do is slightly alter the compound whenever a drug is made illegal, as previous speakers have said. Clearly we need to allow our young people to know exactly what the effects of these sorts of substances are and try to persuade them not to take them, bearing in mind that most young people pay no attention to whether or not they are illegal. We should therefore put far more emphasis on and resources into education and far less into enforcement, let alone into making yet more substances illegal.