Drug Addiction

Debate between Craig Mackinlay and Ronnie Cowan

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Craig Mackinlay]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman: I feel there is a false economy in cutting that type of service. Obviously, they are the sorts of services where we cannot always see what sort of bang we are getting for the pound spent, because the savings come about in a rather disparate way. The hon. Gentleman brings a very powerful case to the table.

The Government have spent vast sums of money over the last few years on the Frank initiative. I do not know whether hon. Members will remember it—“Call Frank”; “Tell Frank”. I have asked many youngsters of late whether they have heard of “Frank”, and they do not have a clue who he is, so I question somewhat the effectiveness of the Frank initiative, which is particularly aimed at teenagers and adolescents. I will be reporting in a detailed paper shortly, so hon. Members should look out for that.

Almost in closing, I want to look at the July 2017 drug strategy. It is a good strategy with recovery at its heart. It looks at the threats and at the actions we can take to reduce homelessness, domestic abuse and mental health issues. The strategies are the usual strategies, which I think are common sense: reducing demand through deterrence and the expansion of education and prevention information, obviously restricting supply through law enforcement responses, supporting recovery and driving international action to reduce the amount of foreign-produced drugs hitting our streets—of course, that does little to stop the ever-increasing rise of cannabis grown in the UK. I believe it is clear that drug misuse destroys lives. It has a devastating effect on families and communities.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is coming to his conclusion. He seems to be saying that we are spending all that money trying to penalise people for drug use and trying to cut off the international supply. He has put horrific figures in front of us today. What will he do to change and affect that outcome?

[Craig Mackinlay]

The hon. Gentleman will hear that in my conclusion.

[Ronnie Cowan]

I was too soon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay]

I am sure that, as any of these debates progress, there is often a clarion call: “Let’s just liberalise. Let’s just legalise.” I am very pleased that, from what I have heard so far from the Government, they have no intention of doing that, and I massively support them. Drugs are illegal for a reason, because of the clear evidence that they are harmful to human health and associated with the wider societal harms of family breakdown, poverty, crime and antisocial behaviour.

[Ronnie Cowan]

What does the hon. Gentleman say to the Portuguese Government, who decriminalised and legalised and have seen a reduction by half in heroin addiction? What does he say to John Marks, who ran a very successful clinic in Liverpool, where the local crime rate dropped by 90%?

[Craig Mackinlay]

Again, if the hon. Gentleman will hold on for a moment, I will address that point. Where we have big experience areas such as Colorado and Washington, we have not seen just a stabilisation, reduction or more sensible use. We have seen increased rates and an increase in deaths and consequential accidents and results. To address his point, in an operation in Switzerland, which I think was also replicated in London, Brighton and Darlington in 2009, an unresponsive minority of heroin users who seemed not to be affected by normal drug treatment methods were given pharmaceutical-grade heroin under daily clinical conditions. I am not averse to that; it is a way forward for a very hard core of users, to keep their criminality off the street, get them clean drugs at the right time and help them off their addictions.

We often say, “Why should we criminalise the user?” In my experience of the court system, I have never seen somebody go to prison for the use of drugs. They tend to go to prison because of the criminality that results from drugs. There is one country, Sweden, that is very stiff on these things. Sweden has probably one of the most penal criminal codes for even personal use of drugs. It is interesting that it enjoys one of the lowest rates of drug use in Europe.

I have concerns that we are facing a general institutional downgrading of possession, particularly of class B drugs, and for that reason I am not sure that we see the full spectrum of what is happening out there in real drug use, based on the figures we receive from the police. If we were to see those, we would see reductions. Arrests for cannabis possession have apparently dropped by 46% since 2010. Cautions are down by 48% and numbers of people charged are down by 33%.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Is that not symptomatic of the police force taking a different attitude? Many police commissioners have come out and said, “We have to stop arresting people for personal possession.”

[Craig Mackinlay]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That has been the outcome. I am not particularly keen on seeing youngsters receive a criminal record for the use of drugs. There is perhaps another way, such as a non-recordable early intervention, rather than a criminal record that could be with them for life and weigh seriously against their potential job opportunities for the future. We are seeing police guidelines saying that no arrests should be made for possession. I am worried that we are seeing a normalisation of drug use. If youngsters feel that that is the new norm, there will be very little deterrent and they will feel that taking cannabis is acceptable. Inquiries I have made for my report have shown that youngsters still feel that they are deterred from going into using cannabis by the threat of criminal sanction.

I will come to my conclusion, which I hope will wrap a few things up. I am particularly fearful that this side of the Atlantic will face a potential onslaught of fentanyl and other artificial opioid derivatives, and I feel the Government need to be prepared for that. Action to rehabilitate that current core of class A drug users now will save their lives in the future, should fentanyl become more of a norm on our streets. I feel that we should be upping our game in three strands of work: education in schools, colleges and universities.

I would like to see significantly increased sentences for drug supply. Under current sentencing guidelines, the maximum sentence for the category A offence of suppling 5 kg-plus of class A drugs, which is right at the high end of drug supply, is 16 years, compared with 35 years for attempted murder. As we cope, or potentially have to cope, with fentanyl and similar lethal derivatives, we should perhaps give some thought to creating a new class—class AA—for these truly lethal drugs.

But to me, rehabilitation is the key, and I would not want to see services or that type of expenditure downgraded, because of the £2.50 saving for every £1 of investment. I would like residential rehabilitation to be the norm. We could call them prisons, if hon. Members would like, but they would be prisons or centres with one primary focus, and I think the judiciary would welcome being able to make that choice. They would be abstinence-based rehabilitation centres; people would go in on drugs and come out clean.