My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to reducing the risks of drugs to our young people. I also thank the Minister for spending time discussing the Bill with me last week.
I start with the views that the Government and I have in common. We all agree that it is most unhelpful to criminalise young people. From my point of view, the best feature of the Bill is that it does not directly criminalise young people for simple possession or use of psychoactive substances. Also, we all want to reduce deaths of young people from drugs. We want to see a reduction in the incidence of drug addiction. We agree that to ban the most dangerous drugs is necessary, if only to give a clear message to young people that these should not, on any account, be taken. So far, so good. Now let us consider each of the above points and ask whether the Bill will achieve what the Government, I and others hope it will.
First, on deaths from drugs, the argument has been that some 97 people died in 2012 from synthetic psychoactive substances, with similar numbers in other years. In fact, I think that the number is probably nearer 60. The important question is: would a ban reduce the number of such deaths? Unfortunately, it seems not. The experts tell me that all but about five of those deaths resulted from young people taking banned substances—not necessarily even psychoactive substances.
Indeed, I am told that in Ireland, which introduced a blanket ban in 2011, deaths have actually increased. On the basis of existing evidence, therefore, if the Bill has any effect on deaths it is likely to increase them, rather than reduce them. In Poland, too, which introduced a ban on psychoactive substances, the number of poisonings three years after the ban had risen above the pre-ban level. I understand that when the President left office he was asked what his worst mistake was. He said it was the psychoactive substances Bill.
Will the Bill lead to a reduction in the incidence of drug addiction? Sadly, it would appear not. Following the Irish ban, head shops closed wholesale, as others have said. As a result, the market has been driven underground. The Irish advisory committee report expressed concern that it appeared that, as a result of slightly earlier bans, young people had moved back to taking traditional drugs, including cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis. Even heroin use had increased. Also, the web trade in synthetic psychoactive substances is apparently thriving in Ireland. According to the experts,
the use of synthetic substances in Ireland is the highest in Europe, despite the 2011 ban—or perhaps because of it; we do not know.
Not only has Ireland seen an increase in the use of synthetic drugs following the ban, but the banned drugs are, of course, far more dangerous today than they were before. They can be purchased only from illegal drug dealers or through the web. Such dealers have no interest whatever in the health of the people who buy materials from them. They regularly mix the drugs with other agents, as we all know, including poisons that cause untold damage and, indeed, death. That is why the deaths issue is far from straightforward. Also, a ban on all synthetic substances means that, by driving them to the dealers or on to the web, young people have no idea what they are taking. This may be the worst aspect of drug taking in this country and elsewhere.
Head shops, on the other hand, want to look after their customers. They do not want to kill or even to harm them. They want them to come back and buy more of their delightful substances. They therefore sell the less-risky substances. Illegal drugs leading to deaths are not generally—perhaps ever—sold by head shops; they are sold in other ways. We may not like head shops, but does the Minister agree that illegal dealers and the web are both infinitely more dangerous? If so, will he discuss how we can best deal with what I call the Irish dilemma?
One of the most important ways to reduce the risk of drugs to young people is through information and education, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and others have mentioned. By banning all psychoactive substances for consumption—even the most harmless ones and maybe even beneficial ones—the Government will fail to give any useful message to young people. Yet messaging and education is far more useful than any law. The law has to be a message; it really does.
If, on the other hand, the Government adopted the proportionate approach of the European Union regulation, young people would immediately recognise that the drugs which were regulated were relatively safe—that is, those that are labelled with the risks and side-effects of the drug and the recommended dose. Those would be regulated drugs. Within such a system, young people would be far more likely to avoid drugs which were banned because the message would be abundantly clear—“Don’t take those; have a go at these”. That is very helpful, I would have thought. Young people really do not want to kill or seriously injure themselves. The problem is that they do not know what on earth they are doing half the time. All they need are clear messages. The Bill does not achieve that at the moment although I hope that we can turn it around so that it does. This is far too important an issue to be left to regulations. I can see that the Bill offers opportunities for regulations to achieve some of these things, but I do not believe that is the right way to do it. I will argue in Committee that we should take this seriously.
We all agree that the Government need to avoid criminalising young people, as I said. A way needs to be found in the Bill to discourage people from switching from synthetic to traditional controlled drugs for which
they will immediately face criminal sanctions. They will be criminalised and the Bill will not have achieved its one really good intention—namely, not to criminalise young people. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be willing to discuss how best to achieve this incredibly important objective. Does he agree that the penalties related to a substance should be proportionate to the risks associated with that substance? If so, will he discuss possible ways to achieve that objective, too? For example, we hope to debate an amendment to the Bill which will discourage young people from switching from relatively safe synthetic substances to alcohol. This cannot be a good thing. After all, alcohol kills about 22,000 people a year, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, mentioned. Okay, five people is five too many but five relative to 22,000 is rather a different order of things.
I turn to a few rather different points. Many widely sold drinks contain psychoactive substances. Schedule 1 refers to food, including drink, which does not contain a prohibited ingredient. Does the Minister agree that, as it stands, the Bill would ban beverages containing, for example, small quantities of psychoactive amino acid or quinine? Is tonic water to be banned? One does not want to be frivolous but it is important that we take on board the breadth of this Bill.
Similar problems could arise with commercial products where it is not clear to the authorities whether the substances are for human consumption or not. I understand that industrialists will not be at all happy to be interviewed by the police just in case their normal inputs are covered by the Bill. We need to protect industrialists and people operating in the commercial world. That is what those behind the proportionate European Union regulation exercised themselves to achieve. They did not want the regulation to bother or interfere with commerce.
Another issue concerns establishments involved in research into psychoactive substances. The Bill covers that issue to a degree but does not cover it completely, and there is a lot of worry out there on the part of researchers. Will the Government consider exempting all research units, universities and research enterprises from the scope of the Bill? It would be much simpler if people were not investigated about substances they are importing simply for their work.
Before ending, I want to touch briefly on New Zealand, as the Minister mentioned it. New Zealand tried to introduce a proportionate system whereby private companies were encouraged to pay for research into low-risk substances, and then have those products licensed. It is true that the system did not produce any licensed substances because the costs were too high for those businesses. If the Government were willing to create a rational, successful policy, they could do so, but the research would have to be funded by either foundations or the state, or perhaps a mixture of both. Such a system could be incredibly cost-effective because of course drugs are incredibly costly to the taxpayer, in criminal justice costs, health costs and so on. If you had a number of licensed products—properly labelled and all the rest of it—that young people could take safely, you really might save an awful lot of money for the taxpayer.
In conclusion, new psychoactive substances offer real opportunities for a sensible Government—and I believe this is a sensible Government—to achieve a rational drugs policy which would create a safer world for our young people. I hope we can all work constructively together to achieve that objective.
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