Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

Insert the following new Clause—

“Guidance

The Secretary of State must issue guidance, before this Act comes into force
and regularly updated thereafter, as to how users, enforcement authorities
and others can identify individual psychoactive substances, the degree of
the psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms.”

Insert the following new Clause—

“Provision of information

Before this Act comes into force the Secretary of State must provide—

(a)   a publicly accessible website containing comprehensive
information about all psychoactive substances, including
controlled substances, which he has reason to believe are or may be
available to consumers in the United Kingdom,

(b)   a network of testing centres, readily accessible at no charge to users
and others, at which they can be informed about the identity,
composition, toxicity and potential harms to human health of any
substances brought in by them which there is reason to think may
be psychoactive.”

Insert the following new Clause—

“Education

(1)     The Secretary of State shall require that all children of secondary school age
receive education designed to teach them about the realities of
psychoactive substances (whether controlled or otherwise) and develop
them as persons who are informed, risk-aware, resilient and responsible in
relation to psychoactive substances.

(2)     Ofsted and equivalent agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
shall, in the course of their normal inspections of secondary schools of all
kinds, inspect the performance of individual schools in drug education and
include their findings on this in the reports which they issue on those
schools.

(3)     Ofsted and equivalent agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
shall publish an annual report on the state of drug education in schools in
each nation of the UK, together with recommendations.

(4)     The Secretary of State shall monitor the programmes and resources
available to schools to support their teaching about psychoactive
substances of all sorts (including both controlled and exempted
substances).”

Line 7,
at end insert—

“(2C)    These substances must included one stimulant, one depressant and one
hallucinogenic.”

(2D)    Before adding these substances, which may be substances at present
controlled under the provisions of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the
Secretary of State must be satisfied that he has established a regime of
appropriate regulation in relation to each of them.”

Line 2, leave out “a substance” and insert “certain substances”

Insert the following new Clause—

“Possession for personal use

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.”

Insert the following new Clause—

“Control of cannabis

(1)     Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State shall

make regulations to amend the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001—

(a)   to omit from Schedule 1 to the regulations the substances listed in
subsection (2); and

(b)   to add those substances to Schedule 2 to the regulations.

(2)     
The substances referred to in subsection (1) are—

(a)   cannabis; and

(b)   cannabis resin.”

Insert the following new Clause—

“Report on use of stop and search powers

(1)     The Secretary of State shall make a report to Parliament each year on the
use of powers to stop and search persons and vehicles and of other search
warrants under the powers created in this Act.

(2)     The report shall include statistical and other information which it appears
appropriate to the Secretary of State to include as to the numbers of
individuals stopped and searched under these powers, their ethnicity and
other socio-economic characteristics, the grounds upon which these
powers have been used, and the numbers of people subsequently made
subject to the various enforcement measures provided for in this Act.”

Page 33, line 12,
at end insert “but not before both Houses of Parliament have
debated the conclusions of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session
on Drugs in 2016”