My Lords, I will start by explaining briefly my background. I was a police officer for more than 30 years. I served at every rank up to and including Deputy Assistant Commissioner. On a more personal level, two years ago a former partner of mine, who subsequently became my best friend, died from an accidental overdose of a controlled drug. This is not just a professional interest of mine; it is a very personal one.
I do not want to break up the happy consensus portrayed by the Minister about what the position of the three political parties was. As he quite rightly said, the Liberal Democrat manifesto talked about clamping down on those who produce and sell psychoactive substances—not necessarily, as we will see, banning them.
We on these Benches are as concerned about the harm caused by people misusing drugs as the Government and the Labour Party are. We believe that there should be a health-based approach, aimed at reducing harm caused by drug misuse, rather than a legalistic approach that is likely to further criminalise drug users. Successive Governments have gradually eroded the link between criminal penalties and the harm caused by drugs by ignoring the scientific evidence and the advice that they have been given, to the extent that the drug laws in the UK are no longer considered by many people to have any credibility. The Bill, by failing to differentiate between dangerous psychoactive substances and those that are harmless, and by criminalising the production and supply of these substances but allowing simple possession, adds to that confusion and further undermines the credibility of UK drug laws.
As drafted, the Bill is far too broad and indiscriminate, further undermining credibility and efficacy in reducing harm. Legal minds far greater than mine have speculated
on whether producing and supplying scented roses, or perfumes that evoke a sense of well-being or romance, could be illegal under the Bill. Those who claim that simply sniffing such substances falls outside the scope of the Bill clearly need to go back to school to learn some simple biology and chemistry. If you sniff something, you are inhaling it; you are taking molecules into your system, exactly as described in the Bill.
As drafted, the Bill would not outlaw simple possession of new psychoactive substances that come on to the market, which could potentially be far more toxic than drugs currently listed as class A under the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Government may well reply—I think that the Minister alluded to this in his opening remarks—that if that is the case, they could be temporarily banned and then designated as controlled drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act. That course is available to the Government now, without the need for the Bill. My understanding was that the whole purpose of the Bill was to get away from manufacturers constantly changing the formula of psychoactive substances to avoid a drug being banned, yet it does not criminalise possession of what are potentially very dangerous drugs, which could quite easily change in formula in the way that the Bill is designed to eradicate. Either the Government want to send a very strong message that these substances are dangerous, which they may or may not be—in which case, why is possession not a criminal offence?—or they want to say, “Well, actually, these drugs are not as dangerous as controlled drugs”, when in fact they may well be.
As the Bill allows possession of new psychoactive substances while possession of drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act is a criminal offence, the police will be faced with situations that make enforcement very difficult, if not impossible. If the police suspect that I have EX-1, a synthetic imitator of real ecstasy—I hasten to add that an internet search taught me that—in my possession for my own use, the Bill does not give the power for the police to stop, search or arrest me because to possess the substance will not be a criminal offence. However, if the police suspect that I have a real ecstasy tablet in my possession, they can stop, search and arrest me because it is a controlled drug. How are the police going to know? Some will say, “They will assume that it is a controlled drug, and search and arrest you anyway”. So what if I tell the officer that I have nothing illegal on me, that the tablet is indeed a legal EX-1, that they have no grounds to search and arrest me and that if they do, I will sue them? What if the tablet turns out to be legal to possess? Where does that leave the police? What if the police officer backs off because of my assurances, but the ecstasy tablet that I have is in fact a real one? The Bill, quite clearly, has not been thought through in terms of its practical application.
At the moment, I can buy legal highs from a head shop on the high street. It is acknowledged in the briefing given by the Government on the Bill that, contrary to what the Minister said in his introduction, many of these head shops are well run, with those that manage them being very keen to comply with the law. At the very least, I can be pretty sure that what I am buying is not a dangerously addictive class A drug.
If things go badly wrong once I have taken a legal high purchased from one of these head shops, someone can go back to the head shop where I bought it and at least have some idea of what I have taken, and action could be taken to ensure that others are not similarly affected.
Many people buy legal highs now. They like what they do to them, and their use is increasing. If the Bill passes, the only way they can get psychoactive substances and be sure that they are not breaking the law is to go to a local drug dealer. Many of these street dealers have no incentive to ensure the quality of the drugs that they sell, because they could just disappear overnight if things go wrong. The chances of tracing and establishing what drug I had actually been given, were things to go badly wrong, would be much lower.
These drug dealers could just as easily sell me highly addictive class A drugs, and indeed they may have a vested interest in misleading me by giving me a highly addictive class A drug instead of the legal high that I asked for; the high is likely to be greater, and if I get addicted, I could become a regular client. It would make no difference to the dealer, if he were to be caught, whether he was supplying controlled drugs or other psychoactive substances—a long term in prison would await.
We are likely to criminalise many more people as a consequence. If you order psychoactive substances online—we have heard evidence this afternoon about how Irish online sites closed down with the introduction of their legislation—the chances are that the website you are ordering from will be based abroad. Even if you are buying psychoactive substances only for your own personal use, you will be guilty of the criminal offence of importing drugs. If you buy a few tablets to share with your mates on a night out, again you will be guilty of a criminal offence. A lot more people are going to end up with a criminal record as a result of the Bill, even if their primary intention is just to consume the drugs themselves.
The genie is out of the bottle. Many people take legal highs, and they will continue to get hold of them one way or another—whether head shops disappear from the high street or not—or they will simply switch to far more dangerous controlled drugs. The reason that millions of people break the law by taking controlled drugs is that, quite rightly, they see that our drug laws lack credibility. I have never heard a discussion among young people about to go on a night out as to which class a particular drug belongs to, and therefore which drug they are going to take on that basis. The Bill, as currently drafted, as I have said, further undermines the credibility of the drug laws in this country.
We need a new approach: a health-based approach that will genuinely reduce the harm caused by drug misuse and that has credibility among those who misuse drugs, not just an approach that appears to have credibility among politicians who do not really know what they are talking about. We need a system that differentiates between the psychoactive substances that cause most harm and those that are relatively safe—at least as safe as smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol—and we should control and regulate the supply of those relatively safe substances as we do with tobacco and alcohol. To do anything else would lack credibility, particularly in the eyes of young people.
If someone is caught in possession of harmful psychoactive drugs for their own use, controlled or otherwise, and they are a social user, they should have their drugs seized and be placed on an education programme. If someone is caught in possession of harmful psychoactive drugs, controlled or otherwise, and that person is addicted, they should be placed on a rehabilitation programme. If they refuse to co-operate, they should be given a civil fine. Such an approach would be much simpler and far more effective in dealing with this problem than giving thousands of young people a criminal record that could ruin their life chances because they made stupid mistake.
It is time that we started treating those who misuse drugs as victims of drug dealers rather than as criminals. It is time that we confronted the fact that criminalising young people for possessing substances only as harmful—or less harmful—than alcohol or tobacco lacks credibility.