Drugs Policy — House of Commons, 2017-07-18
Topic: Law and Crime
John Mann (Labour, Centre-left): May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) on a brilliant maiden speech? It was one of five exquisite, eloquent, factual and well-informed maiden speeches that we have heard today. I have visited all those towns other than Ipswich, although I do hope that, at some stage, I will visit his football club and make it five out of five. I congratulate all five new Members on those speeches Interestingly, the facts provided by each one so eloquently are not matched—as is ever the case in a debate on drugs —by the so-called facts provided in many contributions. It always saddens me that, when it comes to debates on drugs, people quote from other people’s briefings rather than do their own empirical research. I could give very many examples of that, but I will confine myself to just one—safe injecting rooms I have been to safe injecting rooms in many places across the world. I have been to them in this country. Yes, they do exist in this country—not officially—and they can be effective in some situations for some people. They also have many downsides. The debate about the downsides and the upsides among the very people who run them are part of the larger debate. One of the problems is that they tend to be most effective in the heart of big cities, normally in so-called red light areas with significant amounts of street prostitution. That is where they tend to be most effective for some of the most vulnerable in society. Safe injecting in those places certainly saves lives, but what is found every time is that the majority of clientele who come in are passing tourists. That is because these places are known, they are visible and they are in the middle of big cities—of course those kind of zones are in the middle of big cities Sydney provides us with a good example, but there are many others places where that debate on their effectiveness has been a big problem. The ones in the Netherlands, which are not called safe injecting rooms, are not officially designated and are not public, are actually very effective. I call them retirement homes, because that is what they are. Cups of tea are available and the people there are very much of the same age profile—slightly younger—as those in retirement residences or social projects in this country. Clean needles, cups of tea, biscuits and advice are provided if required. The spaces are safe, they work and they save lives If we want, when it comes to injection, to save lives in this country, introducing Naloxone for paramedics would, overnight, have far bigger consequences, as has been demonstrated; there are thousands of medical tracts on drugs. The Australians have used Naloxone in dealing with overdoses for the past 15 years; that is why they have far fewer deaths from overdoses. Its introduction in this country would be a major step forward in dealing with deaths I came to this subject in 2002, when 13 of my constituents died from heroin overdoses in one year. After a year of research, in which I went around the world with GPs to see what worked and what did not, I overwhelmingly came to the conclusion that what works is not politicians telling each other whether cannabis is good, bad, strong or weak, or what to do with this or that drug; it is trusting the experts—the medical experts All the debate today has been about illegal drugs, but probably the biggest single problem in this country, in terms of addiction and the number of people misusing drugs, is legal drugs—prescription and over-the-counter drugs; volume-wise and, I suspect, death-wise, that is a bigger problem. I could not have disagreed more with the Minister when she said that her test for her children—I am trying to quote her exactly—was whether the drug was available at Boots. No; what is available over the counter at Boots or any other chemists is a problem in the war on drugs. The over-prescription of drugs, and the illegal sale of prescription drugs in our communities, is a massive problem that, volume-wise, far outweighs the other problems When we talk about drugs, we are not talking about one thing. It is like talking about food; I suspect that a vegetarian would not want to be provided simply with "food" for a meal, if they visited one of us; they would probably want a certain type of food. We should trust medical expertise. In my area, after a battle, I got a system set up whereby if someone had a substance misuse problem—heroin being the biggest one—they went in through the front door of their GP’s practice. It took me six months of battling to make sure that every GP’s practice took part in that, and six months to ensure that it was the front door, not the back door. It took me three months to make sure that it was a GP, rather than a drug worker. Anyone can be a drug worker —there is no qualification for being one—but not anyone can be a GP; the standard, in my view, is satisfactorily high in this country Guess what we found? There has been a lot of talk of rehabilitation, but I will tell hon. Members the biggest rehabilitation that someone on heroin can get: it is going through the front door of their GP’s practice, like everybody else in the community—like their mother, father, brother, sister, and sometimes their kids. It is going through the same door and seeing the same GP. Strangely, that is rehabilitating and normalising. It takes people back into society—and it is dirt cheap: the biggest single cost of this in my area is from the dental treatment, because those with a significant substance misuse problem do not tend to go to dentists. They go into treatment; I do not know what the treatment is, though I know some of the modalities, but the treatment is not my decision, or the decision of a politician, a councillor, the police, the criminal justice system, or a drug worker; the GP decides on the treatment. Strangely, these people wanted dental treatment; that was the highest single cost. Strangely, people who have had dental treatment have a far better chance of getting through a job interview than those who have had no treatment for five or 10 years. A job means a bit more rehabilitation, and if the local council has its act together it can provide proper housing What happens when people have better teeth, the ability to go to their GP through the front door, a job and secure housing? What we found was that people stopped dying. There were 13 deaths in 2002, and over the next 11 years there were two. Vast numbers of people got back into work; they paid taxes—they were in rehabilitation. Forget the statistics that the Government give out about who is in treatment and who is not—I will talk in a moment about how the system has fiddled the figures since 2010—because a good statistic is the number of people paying taxes What is the saving? It is hard to quantify, but I can certainly quantify one thing. In 2002 the yearly average for the number of overdose admissions to Bassetlaw hospital was 170, each of which cost £4,000. That yearly average was immediately reduced to under 40, and it stayed like that for the next 11 years. That meant a saving of £500,000 a year for a small hospital. Some people were worried that the hospital would need security staff and cameras, to guard against all the drug addicts coming in, but there were far fewer drug addicts, far fewer overdoses and far fewer hospital admissions. That meant a direct saving. Remind me, Mr Deputy Speaker, which constituency had the biggest fall in acquisitive crime in the whole of the United Kingdom?