here - United Kingdom Parliament

291WH
Drugs
6 JUNE 2013
Drugs
292WH
[Mr Jeremy Browne]
1996. The 2011-12 crime survey in England and Wales
estimated that 8.9% of adults—about 3 million people—had
used an illicit drug in the previous year. In 1996, the
figure was 11.1%, so there was a fall of a bit less than a
quarter—about 20%, according to my rough and ready
calculations. There was therefore a significant fall in the
number of people who said they had taken illicit drugs
in the previous year.
School pupils also tell us they are taking fewer drugs.
In 2011, 12% of 11 to 15-year-olds said they had taken
them in the previous year. In 2001—a decade earlier—the
figure was 20%, so it fell from 20% to 12% in a decade.
Some hon. Members may think that 11 to 15-year-olds
are not entirely reliable when talking about their drug
consumption, but there is no particular reason to believe
they were any more or less reliable in 2011 than they
were in 2001.
The number of heroin and crack cocaine users in
England has fallen below 300,000 for the first time. We
have now got to a situation where the average heroin
addict is over 40. The age of heroin addicts is going up
and up, as fewer young people become heroin addicts in
the first place. We are trying to rehabilitate and treat
addicts and to keep those figures falling. They are not
falling dramatically, but they are falling consistently,
year on year, for those very serious drugs, which often
concern people most.
On restricting supply, we have talked a bit about the
countries that some of the class A drugs come here
from and about the work we are doing with European
partners and others. Tribute has rightly been paid to the
Serious Organised Crime Agency, and the National
Crime Agency, which will succeed it later this year, will
also have a focus on working with countries around the
world to reduce harm in the United Kingdom.
On building recovery, the average waiting time to
access treatment is down to five days. There is an
impressive support structure available, and drug-related
deaths in England have fallen over the past three years.
Record numbers of people are recovering from dependence,
with nearly 30,000 people—29,855, to be precise—
successfully completing their treatment in 2011-12.
That is up from 27,969 the previous year, and it is
almost three times the level seven years ago, when only
11,208 people recovered.
I do not pretend that we have all the answers or that
the situation is perfect, but we should not despair,
because, in the light of all those statistics, there is good
reason to believe that the harm resulting from many of
the drugs that have caused people the most upset and
alarm over many years has diminished to a degree.
The problem is evolving. For example, cannabis, which
was largely imported a decade ago, is increasingly home
grown by criminal organisations in the United Kingdom.
The cannabis that people consume is also a lot stronger.
I sometimes tell people that the active substance in
cannabis is as much as seven or eight times stronger
than it was, so people can be talking about quite a
different drug. Sometimes, older people talk about cannabis
in a bit of a summer of love, Janis Joplin, 1967 way.
Now, however, we are talking about a much stronger
drug, with the potential to cause greater harm.
It is a bit like going from drinking a pint of real ale to
drinking a pint of neat vodka. In both cases, an alcoholic
drink is being consumed, but most people would accept
that the potential for harm is quite a lot greater in the
latter case. That is what we are discussing. The strength
of modern cannabis is seven times greater, which raises
some interesting public policy questions about how we
deal with cannabis and how much concern we should
have about people consuming it.
Dr Huppert: The Minister is absolutely right to say
that there are different strengths of both THC and
some of the psychoprotective components of cannabis.
It is of course hard to regulate and set standards for
something that is fundamentally illegal. Has the Minister
looked at the experience in California, for example,
where medical marijuana is available? The different
levels of strength are clear, so people can judge what
they actually want to buy. I have no idea what will
happen, but will the Minister keep an eye on the legalisation
trials in Washington state and Colorado?
Mr Browne: As I mentioned earlier, I am going to the
United States of America and I am visiting both Colorado
and Washington state, which are the two states that
have voted to legalise cannabis. I was in Denmark last
week and the mayor of Copenhagen is keen to legalise
cannabis, but the pretty liberal Danish Government are
keen to remind the mayor that it is not within his power
to legalise cannabis and that it is not a policy that they
want to pursue.
The point is that the public policy debate around
cannabis is evolving. The potential health harms caused
by cannabis are greater than when it was a much less
powerful drug. People sometimes talk about cannabis
as being the softer end of the drugs market and say that
cannabis could be legalised while everything else is kept
illegal as if it were a benign drug and all others harmful.
If that were once the case, it is less the case now.
Cannabis does have cause to concern people.
I move finally on to psychoactive substances, which is
a whole new area that is evolving a lot. It is good that we
see significant reductions in people consuming heroin
and crack cocaine, which are very harmful drugs, but
new psychoactive substances are a fast-evolving threat
to many people. In the most tragic cases, some people
have died after taking such drugs. People sometimes
assume—this is interesting for public policy—that because
something is legal it is safe. People have quite paternalistic
assumptions about the state even when they are not
necessarily minded to believe the Government in other
areas of public policy. Just because something is legal,
that does not mean that it is safe to consume.
Some such drugs get under the barrier by claiming
not to be for human consumption and serious harm has
been caused to people by consuming so-called novel
psychoactive substances. We have tried to adapt how we
respond to such substances to take account of their
fast-moving nature. As has been mentioned, we have
introduced temporary class drug orders and just this
week the Government laid such an order in my name
that will take effect from 10 June for two groups of
NPSs known as NBOMe and Benzo Fury. We are
discussing families of drugs, because, as has been said,
these chemical compounds can be manipulated and
form whole categories of drugs. We therefore do not