Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-10-19
Topic: Health
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): The Opposition support the principles of the Bill. The 2015 Labour manifesto included a commitment to ban the sale and distribution of dangerous psychoactive substances, which is why we are with the Minister tonight The illicit drugs situation in the UK and throughout the world is constantly changing. Protecting young people from harm is our responsibility, even if we know that there is no silver bullet to reduce the trade in drugs. New psychoactive substances can be a significant danger to public health, and they have taken people’s lives. Jimmy Guichard was a fun-loving, sporty 18-year-old bloke living in Kent. He had heard of legal highs and decided to try them. He bought a packet of Clockwork Orange from a local head shop, and he may have taken a high dose, possibly the same as he would have done for ordinary cannabis. He had a severe reaction, suffered a heart attack and, sadly, died the next day Owain Vaughan was 14 when he tried a brand of synthetic cannabis with friends and was overcome by its potency. He described the effects to BBC News: "It made me physically ill, I collapsed, I started fitting, I tried to get up, but fell straight back down and banged my head…I felt my own heart stop and I was scared." Unfortunately, stories like Jimmy’s and Owain’s are not isolated incidents. The Office for National Statistics reports that there were 67 deaths in England and Wales involving psychoactive substances in 2014, so the problem is clearly growing. We do not have comprehensive evidence about the overall harm of psychoactive substances, but people have died as a result of taking these drugs. Some of the substances can cause severe adverse effects such as heart palpitations, panic attacks, hallucinations and even psychotic episodes The supply of these drugs is becoming an industry. They are made, marketed and supplied by unprincipled organisations for financial profit. Our understanding of the dangers of legal highs has been greatly enhanced by the work of the Angelus Foundation, and I pay tribute to Maryon Stewart, who established the foundation after losing her daughter Hester, a medical student, to the legal high GBL in 2009. Research by the Angelus Foundation has estimated that there were more than 250 head shops in the UK selling these products in 2013. According to the crime survey of England and Wales, around a third of all new psychoactive substances purchased in the UK came from such businesses. Head shops claim that they do not sell illegal substances, but Home Office tests have shown that almost 20% of packets of new psychoactive substances contain illegal drugs Head shops and other high street retail outlets normalise drug taking and encourage people to experiment with and use drugs. The names and packaging are designed to attract young adults to experiment, and free samples are regularly used as part of marketing strategies. The fact that substances can be bought on the high street in broad daylight without any sanction whatever gives the illusion that the substances are both safe and legal. There are hundreds of internet sites that sell these substances online, with little or no knowledge of who they are selling to. The Home Office estimates that the industry has an annual turnover of £82 million. Overall, the UK has the largest new psychoactive substances market in Europe As the Minister stated, drugs have traditionally been controlled in the UK through the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, under which the Home Secretary has the power to put substances on a banned list, so long as he or she has consulted the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Since the middle of the previous decade, that mechanism has been put under great strain by the explosive growth of new psychoactive substances. We have managed to control some of them, but let us be under no illusion—that has not solved the problem The relatively easy process of creating new psychoactive substances means that these new drugs are appearing on the market all the time. In each of the past six years, more substances appeared on the market than was the case in the previous year. The Home Office and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs cannot keep up because the traditional process of classifying the drugs, with its independent and objective process of assessing the overall harms of a particular substance, can be cumbersome. It is a game of whack-a-mole that the authorities are hard pressed to win. In 2011, the Government tried to deal with the problem by introducing temporary class drug orders. TCDOs allow the Government to ban the production and sale of new psychoactive substances while the ACMD gathers more information on the risk and harm associated with those drugs There are problems with TCDOs. First, they are inherently reactive, and there is always a time gap between a drug coming on to the market and being subject to control. The second problem is that TCDOs last for only 12 months, which puts significant pressure on the ACMD to assess the harm caused by the drug quickly. Another approach taken by the Home Office under the Labour Government was to add generic groups, rather than specific compounds, to the list of controlled substances. Although this procedure has had some success in controlling new psychoactive substances, it is clear that we are dealing with an evolving problem that our current legal framework cannot get to grips with In December 2013, the Government appointed an expert panel that recommended that the most effective way to deal with new psychoactive substances would be to introduce a blanket ban on the supply, importation and exportation of any psychoactive substance that was not specifically controlled or exempted. This approach, as we have heard, is modelled on legislation passed in the Republic of Ireland in 2010. There were 102 head shops in Ireland at that time, according to the Irish police force, and they have now "virtually disappeared". The expert panel was clear that the number of clients attending drug treatment services had declined: 368 people received treatment for problems in 2011 and that number fell to 220 in 2012. Although I accept that it is too early to make a long-term judgment on the success of the Irish model, it seems to have made a start at tackling the problem The Bill takes up the expert panel’s recommendation and makes it a criminal offence to produce, supply, import or export these drugs. I am not so naive as to think that we are going to shut down the industry altogether, even though that is what many people would want, but by more quickly containing production and supply upstream, we will hopefully reduce the harms to young people downstream.