Drugs Policy

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Paul Flynn

Thursday 16th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

I am very much aware of it. I did a scientific analysis some eight years ago of what was happening in drug production in four countries—Switzerland, Sweden, Britain and the Netherlands. It was an attempt to examine the effects and the level of drug abuse. On one point I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East: the level of drug use in Holland is lower than it is here. Sweden, from a very low base, had the biggest increase. The United Kingdom came out worst, and it remains the worst in all outcomes. Switzerland has tried a number of brave experiments, particularly in the way of prescribing heroin. That has been a great success as a way of reducing crime.

However, I want to mention our greatest failure internationally, and the one I feel despair about. I have addressed the Commonwealth of Independent States, the former communist bodies. The worst thing that has happened internationally on drugs concerns them, because when the Berlin wall fell, none of the communist countries had a drug problem; many had alcohol problems, but none had a drug problem. They came to us and said, “You in the west have had this problem for a long time. You guys know about it. What do we do? How do we deal with drugs?”

But instead of getting a formula in which we said, “Well, this has worked,” those countries got back a babble of conflicting views from all parts of Europe. They repeated our remedies and inherited our problems. Those states have 25 million addicts now. If we had adopted a model that worked 10 or 25 years ago, we could have handed it on. I believe that such a model exists in its best state in Portugal now.

I urge all hon. Members to approach the matter with an open mind. I have memories of previous debates of this kind, and in particular of David Mellor, in about 1990, announcing that we could be absolutely certain of one thing—that heroin use had peaked. We had about 90,000 addicts then. When I spoke on the subject about 18 months ago, the number was 280,000, and it is now 320,000.

I recall another debate—we used to have a three-hour debate on Friday mornings—when the Government and Opposition spokesmen had to leave the Chamber because they both needed a fix of the addictive drug to which they were enslaved; they both needed to go out and smoke. I am sure that later in the evening they would wander off to any of the 16 bars in this place, decrying young people’s use of drugs—with a cigarette in one hand, a glass of whisky in the other, and a couple of paracetamol in their top pockets for the headache that they were going to get the next morning.

We behave with hypocrisy and incompetence on drugs. I do not want to go into the wasted years that we have had, but can we just say where the United Kingdom is now, and put aside tabloid pressure? Let us forget about what people say, and the abuse that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East will get, and say we know what is right, and what works, and we know that the policies that we have pursued for 39 years have given us the worst drug problems and the worst outcomes in Europe.

We had tough policies in ’71. They did not work, so we had even tougher policies—and they did not work, so we went on again to still tougher policies. There were great plaudits for all the politicians putting them through. Each time, our problems went up and up. That has not happened in Portugal. In the Netherlands, there is some kind of control. The glamour has been taken away. The joy of forbidden fruit has been taken out of using cannabis. People can go to a cannabis café and have a cannabis cake with their grandmother. Where is the fun in that? Part of the attraction, here, is the illegality of drugs. Part of the problem, and the reason why people die here, is the illegality of drugs.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East mentioned that people can, if they get control of their heroin and know its quality and strength, become heroin addicts and live into their nineties. Many people have. There are homes in the Netherlands for geriatrics who are heroin addicts. They can be maintained. People here who are unfortunate enough to be addicted must take their heroin from illegal sources, from those who produce products that may well be toxic or contaminated. They take them in unhygienic surroundings in a dark alley. That is why prohibition is killing people.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Gentleman paints a very rosy picture of people living a long and happy life on heroin. One of my constituents spent 30 years on methadone and has now been drug-free for two years. He has just celebrated his second drug-free birthday. He said he has wasted his life. The difference between his life on methadone and his life drug-free is like being born again. He is one of the strongest advocates of tackling the situation in which we park people on methadone for years on end, rather than, through rehabilitation, tackling the reason why they use drugs in the first place.

[Paul Flynn]

The hon. Gentleman is simplifying the problem. No one is in favour of people going on methadone for prolonged periods, but it does happen, and often it is preferable to the alternative. The point that the hon. Gentleman seems to miss is that a rich heroin addict can live almost without risk. We know of famous people—I shall not mention any names—who were heroin addicts all their lives and died in their beds at an advanced age. At the moment it is poor addicts who suffer, and who are in the position I described—exposed to street dealers and contaminated heroin.

I remember vividly, from the time of the 2002 Home Office report—I was kindly mentioned in the introduction—working with David Cameron, and attending the meetings. I remember his sharp questioning of a man called Fulton Gillespie, whose son had been killed by injecting heroin contaminated with talcum powder.

I had a hope that the generation now in government and opposition—I am sure that most members of the Cabinet and shadow Cabinet used illegal drugs in their university careers—would at least have the courage to see that the present policies are not working, and can never work. I hope that they go through the same realisation that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East has courageously undergone, and conclude that we have to have another policy. We should be able to agree on the extent of the failure.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned prisons, and one of his hon. Friends told me that he went to a prison where a prisoner explained that he had toothache and wanted an aspirin, but would have to wait until the next day to see a doctor for that aspirin. He also said that he could go out of his cell and obtain heroin, marijuana or cocaine within five minutes.

How many of our prisons are drug free? None. No prison in the country is drug free. If we cannot keep drugs out of prisons with 30-foot walls, what chance do we have of implementing a policy of prohibition to keep drugs out of schools and clubs?

[Andrew Griffiths]

We agree on that point, but the matter is much worse. The number of methadone interventions—prescriptions—to prisoners has more than doubled in just over three years. The problem is not just illegal drugs in prison; methadone is being prescribed more and more to keep prisoners quiet.

[Paul Flynn]

There seems to be a concentration on methadone as a solution. It is not. It is part of the problem. There is no way round it, except the nonsense of putting addicts in prison for their addiction. Nothing could be more counter-productive or a larger waste of money. I believe that that is in the convention that will be introduced next year. There is a universal view that we must move away from using the criminal justice system for treating addiction, and use health outcomes and treatment.

As sensible people, we must recognise the enormity of our continued failure, and get politicians of all parties together—the hon. Gentleman is secretary of the all-party group on drug misuse, and I welcome that—to recognise the courage of my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East and how he has taken on interviews today. That will arouse the realisation, throughout the country and among all parties, that the only way of ensuring that we are not top of the league of drug deaths, drug crime and the other drug problems on this continent of ours is to learn from other people—including lessons from the Netherlands, and particularly the recent lessons from Portugal.

There is a better way. There is certainly no way practised by any country in the world that is worse than what parties on both sides have done for the past 40 years in the United Kingdom.