Misuse of Drugs Act — House of Commons, 2021-06-17
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeffrey Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House has considered the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting us the time for this debate, to the cross-party Members who supported the application, and particularly to the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for co-sponsoring it This May marks 50 years since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 received Royal Assent. Back in 1971 there were three television channels; smoking indoors was normal everywhere from schools to doctors’ waiting rooms; and women could legally be sacked for being pregnant. Our culture and society now are completely different from that time, but our drugs regime remains the same, focusing on prohibition, criminalisation and punishment rather than looking at the evidence on what reduces harm to individuals and to society The 1971 Act was intended to prevent the use of controlled drugs, eliminate illegal drug markets and reduce the harms of drug use; it is not working. The data suggests that in 1971 there were fewer than 100 drug-related deaths in England and Wales; in 2019, drug-related deaths in England and Wales rose for the eighth year in a row to 4,393. There has been a 52% increase in drug-related deaths over the past 10 years, and 2,883 deaths resulted directly from drug misuse. These people mattered and many of their deaths were preventable. If there were better laws and properly funded treatment services, many could still be with us today In the late 60s, around 1% of adults had used drugs at some point in their life; the proportion is now 34%. While the drug market remains in the hands of criminal gangs, drugs are getting stronger and more adulterated. People are dying because they do not know what is in the drugs they are using. Even the Government acknowledge the failings. A 2014 Home Office report reviewed the evidence and said that "there is no relationship between tougher/punitive sanctions on drug possession and the level of drug use in a country." Last year, Carol Black’s review of drugs for the Government said that the evidence suggests that "enforcement crackdowns have little…impact on the overall drug supply…and can often have the unintended consequence of increasing violence, for example by creating a gap in the market for dealers to compete over, or increasing distrust in the drugs market." The police force in County Durham published evidence in which drug users were interviewed about a large-scale undercover police operation, which lasted six months, cost more than half a million pounds, and resulted in the arrest of over 30 people involved in the supply of class A drugs. When users were asked how long they thought the operation had strangled the supply of heroin for, one estimated four hours, and another just two hours. If people want more evidence than that, I recommend the books by former undercover cop, Neil Woods, who gives a graphic illustration of how the market is there and how, even if that market is interrupted, people come in and fill the gap. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem. Through county lines, dealing and exploitation, more and more young people have been pulled into drug supply and a life of crime. In 2017 alone, 38,000 people were criminalised for possession of drugs in England and Wales, almost 3,000 of them under the age of 18—people unnecessarily criminalised, limiting their future life chances and their educational and employment opportunities A third of the prison population are there because of drug offences or offences relating to drug use. Putting people in custodial settings as a result of their substance use punishes those who need help, does not address the root cause of their issues, and is, more often than not, counterproductive All those things add up to part of the human cost of our drugs policy, but what about the financial cost According to the Home Office, in England alone, policing and enforcing current drug policy costs £1.4 billion annually. Half of acquisitive crime is related to illegal drug use. A different Home Office-commissioned report said that the failure of drug policies costs the taxpayer £10.7 billion a year in policing, healthcare and crime. The total societal costs of harms relating to illegal drug use is now £19.3 billion Another consequence of the 1971 Act is how it has held back scientific and medical developments. Drugs in schedule 1 such as Psilocybin, MDMA, LSD and DMT are showing real promise as potentially life-changing treatment options for conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addictions. While it is technically possible, it is slow, difficult and expensive to do medical research into schedule 1 substances. Under this policy regime, we are wasting money, wasting the resources of the criminal justice system, wasting the chance to do better research and to find evidence to inform our drug policy and our medical interventions, and wasting lives.