My Lords, this amendment proposes that the possession for personal use of any psychoactive substances, including psychoactive substances hitherto controlled under the provisions of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, is not a criminal offence. We touched quite extensively on this issue in the debate on Amendment 23 in the name of the Lord, Lord Paddick, but his amendment ranged considerably wider. I hope that the Committee will be willing to focus more tightly on the specific issue that is expressed in the proposed new clause.
In recent years, some 25 countries have removed criminal penalties for personal possession of some or all drugs. Now, for the first time, Her Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom are tiptoeing towards the decriminalisation of possession for personal use because they have omitted, quite deliberately, to criminalise such possession where psychoactive substances are concerned, as defined in the Bill. However, that raises the question of why they are stopping at new psychoactive substances and, of course, the substances that are exempted in Schedule 1. Why do they not now proceed to decriminalise possession for personal use of small amounts of drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971? The policy is inconsistent and confusing. As such, I fear that it is liable to damage respect for the law, and the law in respect of drugs is already not much respected as it is.
Why does the Home Office judge it appropriate to criminalise young people wholesale? I am advised that in the period 2009 to 2013, 59,742 young people under the age of 20 were criminalised for possession of controlled drugs—something like 29% of young people in that age group received a criminal record. Such an
approach is clumsy, to say the least, and I submit that it is very damaging to those young people: the short-term and long-term effects of having a criminal record weigh heavily on their educational and employment prospects and their prospects of being able to obtain credit. It is also expensive for the Exchequer. The continuation of this criminalisation appears to ignore the findings of the Home Office’s own study, Drugs: International Comparators, which found that the relative toughness of the prohibitionist approach makes no difference to actual consumption.
Like it or not, the recreational use of drugs is widespread in our society. Indeed, I would say that in certain sections of society it is normal. I do not know whether we are welcoming the Minister on his return from a fact-finding mission to Glastonbury at the weekend; he may perhaps have been invited by the organisers in his official ministerial capacity or perhaps he went incognito, possibly not even wearing his suit. I like to think that he was accompanied by Lady Bates and that she may have been bearing in her hand at least a small posy of flowers, because it could be the last time under this legislation that he will have the opportunity to give her flowers—then he will have to default to his position of presenting her with chocolates.
If the Minister was at Glastonbury, no doubt he will have ignored the vapourings coming from left field from such figures as Billy Bragg and Charlotte Church, but he will not have failed to notice that significant numbers of young people there were consuming psychoactive substances. Possibly he regards all of them as lost souls. Still, he may have taken some satisfaction from knowing that this will be the last time that drugs will be consumed at Glastonbury because, through the virtues of this legislation, he will have completed the circle of prohibition: it will be impossible for them legally to obtain psychoactive substances in future. Such will be the zeal for enforcement of the police and other authorities, prioritising this prohibition alongside their duties to deal with illegal immigration and threats of terrorism, he can be confident that next year no drugs will be consumed at Glastonbury—unless, perhaps, psychoactive substances descend like manna from heaven on to the fields of Glastonbury, because that is still a possibility. Miracles do occur, and it is not impossible that psychoactive substances will continue to be consumed at Glastonbury and other festivals.
We need a realistic and constructive approach to this matter. The constructive policy is to decriminalise the possession of all drugs for personal use—to legalise, to regulate and, as we have noted in earlier debates, to have a serious campaign to inform and educate people about the realities and dangers of drugs. How helpful it would be if we could distinguish legally between the recreational use of drugs and problem usage. Through decriminalising, I believe that we could get more people, more quickly into more effective help and treatment. This is the difference between the Swedish approach and the Portuguese approach, which we discussed earlier. Decriminalisation, as recommended in the proposed new clause, would release the police from so much futile activity.
I am told that Her Majesty’s Government are spending something of the order of £1.5 billion a year on drug law enforcement. The impact assessment for the Bill, at paragraph 75, anticipates that the costs of the new measures to the public sector will be only £60,000 in year 1 and £50,000 a year thereafter. This is a joke: all the new offences created and all the enforcement activities legislated for in the Bill will cost a lot of money. We would do better to switch that expenditure and other expenditure into a real drive on information, education, youth work, healthcare through Public Health England and doing very much better about drugs in prisons.
Should we be condemning or should we be helping? In our society, there is no consensus as to whether the use of drugs is a crime, a vice, a weakness, an illness, an adventure, an act of rebellion or a recreation. It is all these things to different people at different times. But if we cease treating it as a crime, we will, as I have said before, greatly reduce the alienation of so many young people from politics and government, and we will be better placed to help people in need.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, asked me to convey her apologies to the Committee that she is unable to speak to her Amendment 46. She has had to go because she is hosting a reception for Leonard Cheshire Disability, which is being attended by the Secretary of State. I beg to move.