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7.05 pm
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by the Home Secretary in the other place earlier today. The correction of the wrong that this Statement represents is long overdue. I make it clear from the outset that we support the reclassification of cannabis as a class B drug, with the appropriate legal penalties that this now brings with it. Many people would now agree that the Government made a serious error of judgment in downgrading cannabis in 2004.
With the Statement, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary—I think that it is both of them—have overridden the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The council’s recommendation was very clear that the matter should be left for at least a year for further consideration, but I think that the decision that has been made is correct. We fully support that action.
Whatever is said on this subject, parents of children who start taking cannabis, magistrates’ courts—I declare an interest as a magistrate—which see the result of theft and muggings by drug abusers, most of whom started their drug careers on cannabis and who carry out those activities to support their habit, and the general public all see the baleful effects that this drug has on those who take it habitually.
As the Minister said, the potency of the drug has increased substantially and pure cannabis has been replaced by the stronger, adulterated skunk. Anecdotally, at least, young people are driven to crime by their desire to have it and much of the increase in violent
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Reducing cannabis from class B to class C gave out all the wrong messages. It suggested that cannabis was a soft drug and that it was relatively harmless. However, cannabis is recognised as a real threat to health, as the advisory council acknowledges. In susceptible people it has an effect on either or both their physical or mental health. It also reduces inhibition. Most important of all, its downgrading gave the message that it could be taken without fear of retribution. That meant that the police by and large gave up stopping people taking it in public and so achieved some of their other targets. They did that by issuing warnings rather than arresting those in possession of small amounts. Even the Association of Chief Police Officers, which initially supported the downgrading, announced in 2007 that it supported reclassification, as the current position was leading to confusion about the drug’s legal status.
The immediate impact of upgrading cannabis is to put it on a par with drugs such as amphetamines. For those arrested, the possible judicial penalties are substantially increased from a maximum of two to five years in prison. Fines and other penalties also rise proportionately. The offence has moved—rightly in our view—to become much more serious.
I am glad to hear that the Government will ensure that enforcement by the police will take place and that there will be a review of the value of cannabis warnings. There was an alarming report in the press a short while ago that suggested that some police forces might simply ignore the reclassification and carry on as they have done since 2004, treating cannabis possession as a very minor offence. It is not, and will not be, appropriate for it to be treated as such. I would like an assurance from the Minister that the police will be required to take the upgrading seriously and to deal with it appropriately. I know that that is what the Home Secretary has said, but we need a stark indication that that will happen.
Will the Minister tell us when the proposals developed by the police and criminal justice partners, to which he referred, will be ready? There is a nasty tendency for these things to be initiated and then never to be seen again. They vanish into the ether. This cannot be allowed to happen. I hope that a timescale will be set by which the proposals will have to be on the Home Secretary’s desk and be implemented.
Will the Minister also tell us what educational programmes will now be developed? Young children need to be taught about the dangers of starting on drugs and how to prevent drugs becoming part of their social life and they need to be taught that drugs will lead them into trouble. This must be done either in school or in educational establishments, but there is a responsibility on teachers and parents not to duck the issue. Having advice available through organisations associated with health, as outlined in the Statement, may be a useful adjunct, but it is not a replacement for preventive education.
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The mostly young people whose lives and health are effectively ruined by the activities of those who provide, push and sell cannabis need to be protected from the drug and its suppliers. Sustained and firm action will be required to ensure that those involved are stopped and that their lines to the drug are severed. This Government failed parents, children, young people and the vulnerable by the message that they gave in declassifying this nasty drug. As they reclassify it, they need to give out an equally strong message that they will not weaken again in the fight to ensure that our younger generation grows up untainted by drugs.
7.12 pm
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the other place. It will come as no surprise to him that these Benches do not support the reclassification, particularly in the light of the fact that cannabis use has fallen, as he said, by 20 per cent since the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, chose to reclassify it. It is particularly depressing that this reclassification goes against the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
We welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the other recommendations in the report. The report contains particularly important recommendations on action on cannabis farms, organised criminals and enforcement around schools. However, the classification was supposed to reflect the harm incurred. The Government’s expert committee has given its opinion on the harm incurred. If there is one thing that young people understand, it is honesty and dishonesty in a message. It is critical to be honest to get the message through about the harm that drugs do. If the Government have been advised that this should remain a class C drug, it ill behoves politicians to fly in the face of that advice.
Now that the Government propose reclassification, what do they expect the result to be? What are their expectations regarding whether usage will continue to fall? What target have they set for the next two years? The Government argue that skunk is stronger, but the advisory council took that into account.
These Benches very much regret that this Statement is again one that has emanated from the Home Office. We would have preferred it to have come from the Department of Health, because this is basically a health and education issue. The Home Secretary says that her decision takes into account issues such as public perception and the needs of and consequences for policing priorities. However, we believe that the Government have placed the emphasis in the wrong place. This is really a health and education issue and should be a Home Office issue only when that approach has failed.
These Benches certainly do not deny the serious links that arise for a minority of people between the use of cannabis or skunk and psychotic mental health. That is a serious issue, which we do not underplay. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, made some interesting points about the whole question of addiction and brain function when we debated the issue previously. I am glad to see that she is present and will no doubt
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A couple of years ago, Tom Wood, then the drugs tsar for Scotland and a former deputy chief constable, said that the time for enforcement had passed and that we had to make education the number one priority. How right he was. I regret that the Government are taking a backward step, although I recognise that the Minister placed some emphasis on education.
Can the Minister tell me how many drug treatment places are available and how many are planned to satisfy the increased need in the next two years that will result from the action that we are discussing? I am sure that he is well aware that a drug treatment place costs at least £4,000 a year less than a prison place. If the course set out in the Statement is followed, it will inevitably result in far more people going to prison on account of cannabis use. That is not a good use of taxpayers’ money, which should be spent rather on education and health measures. How many people are in prison for drug offences? If just one in 10 went to a residential centre instead, we would save some £40 million a year.
At the end of the day, this is not just about saving money; it is about ensuring that the health and mental health of the nation are not adversely affected and that organised criminals do not profit from a trade that should not take place. We feel that the Government have taken a retrograde step. We shall scrutinise the orders closely.
7.19 pm
Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, for her support for the move to change the classification of cannabis. She spoke very passionately about the damage and harm that drugs do to our society, and I agree with her. I think that all of us agree with that. There is no doubt that drugs affect a lot of young people. Equally, there is no doubt that the new variant of skunk has a huge impact. I know from my children and from their friends that there has been a tendency for people to smoke. I think that I am one of the few people who seems never to have had a puff of one of these things; it is amazing how many people have done. A friend of one of my sons has been appallingly affected by this. That is not unusual; all of us probably know friends and families who have been affected by this sort of thing.
I do not like talk of U-turns and changes. There was a lot of debate when we downgraded the drug, and a lot of advice was given. Skunk was not as prevalent at that stage. One was trying to see whether that would make a difference and help us in moving forward. Now we have looked at the evidence, and we have seen how much skunk is on the streets. There is a lot of doubt about what the scientific evidence is, but a lot of people feel that it has an impact. We all have personal examples of where this has damaged families
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The noble Baroness asked whether we will make absolutely certain that the police will take this seriously and upgrade how they tackle such crimes. The answer is absolutely yes. The Home Secretary has written to ACPO and we are looking for something by the end of June. We need to take some action in this area, because it is extremely damaging.
Regarding the additional work that needs to be done as well as penalties, the noble Baronesses, Lady Miller and Lady Hanham, both touched on that. It is not just a question of punishment. We need a mass of other things that will enable us to educate people and move them away from using drugs. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, spoke about that at length, and it is absolutely right. We have a good story to tell.
Spending on Frank was about £6.5 million last year, and we are spending in excess of £5 million this year. There was a reduction because of our previous investment. That has achieved a great deal. There is a lot of communication to people who are at risk and a series of adverts. I have seen only one or two of them because I became aware of them, but they are not really aimed at people like us—they are aimed at the people who might be using drugs. It is known as the “brain warehouse”. I do not know whether any noble Lords have seen the adverts. They have hit the mark; 69 per cent of youngsters in the 13 to 18 year-old bracket, which we want to reach, are aware of what this means. The slogan is, “With stronger strains than ever before, the more you mess with cannabis the more it can mess with your mind”. They are aware of that message, and it is a good message to get across.
We are also involved with parents. We tell them how to get hold of access lines and how to talk to us. There is a 24-hour helpline and a number of areas where they can talk to non-government organisations that provide information and support to parents, such as DrugScope, Re-Solv, the Children’s Society and Adfam. There is a whole raft of such organisations. It is right that we should do those things, because at the end of the day one cannot just punish one’s way out of this; it is much more than that. The two things are complementary. It is right to get the message across about how dangerous and damaging cannabis is.
The issue of paraphernalia is important. In some shops there are all sorts of things making out that this is smart, clever and a rather trendy thing to do. We need to point out that it is not smart and trendy; it is breaking the law, it wrecks families and wrecks lives. Those are the messages that we need to get across. It is not a smart, clever thing to do. It is not at all the drug that was used 40 or 50 years ago in flower power times; it must be that long ago now. Skunk is lethal stuff; it is seriously damaging. It is very, very strong indeed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, asked how we can make this judgment when we have advice that we should leave it in its current category. It is only an advisory council. In the Statement, the Home Secretary explained why this was done. It is interesting that the police are firmly behind this. On the “Today” programme,
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7.25 pm
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I declare an interest as a member of one of the technical sub-committees of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and I am a member of the UK Drug Policy Commission.
My concern relates to the fact that the Government have not listened to the plea to hold off for another year to look more closely at the evidence and the implications that there may be in rejecting scientific evidence and the politicisation of such an issue. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, clearly stated, there is not evidence that consumption has risen since the downgrading, nor is there evidence of an increase in the incidence of schizophrenia. No one underestimates the complete disaster that schizophrenia is, but there is no evidence that the classification will stop those who are at risk of schizophrenia consuming the drug, or that it will stop them developing schizophrenia.
The classification does not affect supply; it is a sentencing guideline. It was created in 1971 as a simple framework for sentencing. There is now a risk of it becoming discredited by political factors and of false expectations being pinned on the benefits of this so-called reclassification. The downgrading that occurred was portrayed in the media as giving a message of harmlessness; I want to be quite clear that there was never a message from ACMD that the downgrading was harmless. It related to the sentencing guidelines going from five years maximum to two years maximum.
The classification was never intended to send a message to young people, and both domestic and international evidence suggests that it is a poor vehicle to do so. The ACMD advised that the strategies designed to minimise use and harms must be predominantly public health ones and not based on criminal justice measures. I will quote a sentence from the letter at the beginning of the report from Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
“In providing this advice ... the Council wishes to emphasise that the use of cannabis is a significant public health issue. Cannabis can unquestionably cause harm to individuals and society”.
There are comparisons to be drawn in other areas of policy where the Government have been bold and
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There is also a need to improve mental health services for young people, because there are young people who are developing mental health symptoms—
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I am reluctant to intervene, but I remind the House that this part of the debate following the Statement is for questions for elucidation, not for statements and debate.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I apologise to the House. Does the Minister intend to increase the mental health services that are available to young people? There is evidence that young people self-medicate using cannabis. If further evidence comes forward that the reclassification has not made any difference at all, what will the Government do?
Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her comments. She spoke about holding off for another year and about politicisation. I do not think that this is politicisation of the issue. The Home Secretary said in the other place that she was not prepared to wait another year and gamble with young people’s health. That is a very good reason for our move. It is far better to make the mistake in that way and not gamble with young people’s health.
As the noble Baroness said quite correctly, we can look at this as time goes on. We need to look at these issues to see how things are moving and what we are achieving. Then there might be a possibility of changing where we have gone; but, at the moment, I am absolutely sure that it was right not to gamble with young people. It was right to make this decision and to make sure that the police are well able to conduct the things that they need to do to enforce it—and to make sure that all the other supportive measures are in place because that is the way, finally, for people who have a drug habit to break out of their dependency .
Perhaps I may get back to the noble Baroness in writing on her question on mental health services for young people, as I do not have an answer.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in 2004 the Statement made on behalf of Her Majesty's Government did not receive universal support on this side of the House; but I am not going to criticise the Government for changing their mind. It is a sign of strength, rather than weakness to change your mind when you are so clearly wrong. I just regret the fact that it took four years to get around to making the right decision.
I have one or two specific questions to ask my noble friend. The Statement talks at some length about the massive growth in the commercial cultivation of cannabis in the United Kingdom. It talks about knowing about these cannabis farms that are controlled by organised criminals who stand to make large profits and will stoop to using trafficked children on these premises. If
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There is more joy in heaven over the repentant sinner than the one who does not require repentance, but some of the repentance would be better accepted if we had a little empirical evidence to back up the claims of the Statement on knowledge of criminal activity.
Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Tomlinson for his comments. I entirely agree with him about changing minds. There seems to be a great focus on U-turns. I feel slightly scarred by that. Although there are shouts of “U-turn!”, it seems logical that we should look at things closely and then make a judgment based on that. If that judgment has changed slightly—if it is better for the nation and one’s people—then it is best to carry that out.
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