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Mr. Flynn: I share the hon. Gentleman's admiration for that report, but I must point out that the official figure--which the Department has given me after several questions--for the number of deaths in the past five years in Great Britain, in which Ecstasy was mentioned as one of the poisons involved, is 54. The number of deaths in which Ecstasy was the only drug mentioned and therefore was the cause was 34.
Mr. Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The figures that he gives are not inconsistent with what the report says and what I have said.
The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk quoted his county's statistics for drug-related crime. The latest figure that I have is that, nationally, about two thirds of crime is drug related. That is a huge figure, and it does not include crimes such as taking drugs or being convicted of supply. I am talking about burglaries, car thefts and so on.
The last set of statistics--again, I am trying neither to up-play them nor to down-play them--come from the SCODA report, which says that 32 per cent. of adults cite social deprivation as the main cause of problem drug use; boredom, 28 per cent.; peer pressure, 24 per cent.; and personal or family problems, 20 per cent. Only 2 per cent. saw criminal tendencies as a root cause. That is important. It is not an activity of criminals. It is not an activity of people who, psychologically, have a criminal tendency.
The Home Office "British Crime Survey 1996" highlighted that unemployment and poor housing are major factors associated with opiate use in the 20 to 29 age group. I have two more figures. Thirty-nine per cent. of people using drugs in public places are homeless. That survey was from the north-west of England, but it is three years out of date. According to the Department of Health's figures for last year, 75 per cent. of the drug
users using drugs services had been unemployed in the two years before treatment, so we must be realistic about the skew in terms of people who in some way are socially disadvantaged.
One of the saddest aspects of modern crime is that crimes are often committed by young people and young adults on other people, particularly the elderly. The Met and other police forces have rightly tried to target crimes of violence against the person, such as street robbery. Many of those crimes are drug related. People on drugs do not behave in the way that they would if they were not on drugs. Their behaviour is sometimes entirely unacceptable. If they behave like animals, the sooner we realise that they should be dealt with severely, the better.
Sadly, this country is awash with legal and illegal drugs. My colleagues sometimes have a go at me for being a health spokesman who has probably used the health service less than anybody else, and who would not take a drug if he could avoid it from one year to the next, whether it is aspirin or anything else. Let me put the issue into context. There are far too many drugs in use. Far too many are prescribed by doctors who see them as an easy way out. Far too many are in general use in the health service, because they have been sold as a quick remedy. Far too many are improperly used. I include legal, harmful drugs--predominantly tobacco, alcohol and, I suppose, caffeine, although I am less certain about caffeine and its implications.
I hope that, as a nation, we shall resolve to reduce the amount of drugs that are in use. Of course, some drugs, such as penicillin, are vital, but many people are given drugs simply to keep them quiet, and non-drug-related remedies are often much better.
Dr. Charles Goodson-Wickes (Wimbledon)
indicated assent.
Mr. Hughes:
I see the hon. Gentleman, who is a general practitioner, nodding. I am grateful for his silent assent.
Common to the promotion of many legal drugs by the drug companies; to the promotion of tobacco and alcohol; and to the promotion of illegal drugs, is profit. There is a hell of a lot of money to be made out of drugs. If we recognise that, we shall realise more clearly what is going on.
In that context, the Government are still entirely inconsistent about tobacco--that is the only criticism that I shall make of the Government today. Tobacco-related diseases kill 100,000 people a year. Yet we allow tobacco to be advertised. Whether we should turn back the clock and make it illegal is a different question, but it is bad that we allow it to be promoted. It is totally unacceptable and obscene that we allowed the Archbishop Michael Ramsay secondary school in my borough to take £250,000 from British American Tobacco as part of the package to become a city technology college. I know that the governors say that they could not get the money from anywhere else. I know that they anguished over it. I respect them. But to drive secondary schools in the inner city to take money from BAT-allied activity--money that came from the profit of tobacco largely sold abroad--is entirely unacceptable. I hope that someone
outside who has £250,000--there are plenty of them in this country--will hear this debate and offer the school the money, so that it does not have to take the money from BAT. It would willingly take it from someone else.
The tragedy is that, accordingly to "The Health of the Nation" figures, the incidence of smoking among young people is on the increase, particularly among young women. I cannot understand how a young person can be expected to hear from a teacher, "Smoking is bad for you," while the school gets its money from the profits of smoking. To turn round a quotation that I think the Leader of the House gave, the only safe cigarette--I know that he smokes, so I am not having a personal go at him--is no cigarette. The only safe tobacco is no tobacco. If people choose to take those risks, fair enough, but in the end it is not helpful and it costs the health service a lot of money.
The people who profit from drugs are not in it because of any particular interest in them. They are the same people who, in the 1960s, did the armed robberies, in the 1970s made their money out of pornography, and who now realise that the easiest way to make their money is from drugs. If we banned alcohol, they would make a profit out of alcohol. So we need have no illusions about who they are.
As Mr. Hellawell, the Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Knowsley, North and all the commentators say, this is a difficult problem and there is no easy answer. There is no magic answer to the problems of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the pill, drugs to deal with malaria or baby milk. Those are all matters of science, and science develops. We keep getting more and different information. None of us deludes ourselves about that, and that is why the POST report and the report of the task force chaired by Rev. John Polkinghorne were so good and why SCODA does such good work.
I will not make a big thing of it--it is no big deal to me--but I must put into context why the Liberal Democrats took the view that there should be a royal commission to consider such issues. It was because science and the evidence change, as do the international consequences. That does not mean to say, however, that as a party we endorse the legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis or any other drug. In a motion that stated that there should be tougher penalties for offenders and strengthened resources for Customs and Excise, we also took the view that the issue should be studied objectively.
The task force is an interesting recent model. It reported last month, and its strength was in its independence. It reflected all professions and walks of life, which is what gave it credibility. I would be happy for the public health commission to do that job--a body that does that job for food and drugs in general. If there were a royal commission to give us the information regularly, we the politicians could decide.
I would require the burden of proof to be in favour of decriminalisation before I supported it, and at the moment neither my colleagues nor I are persuaded, but such a commission would provide that sort of information.
Mr. Spring:
I must point out an inconsistency. There is a clear link between cannabis and cancer. That link has become increasingly clear in a number of studies, particularly in the United States, and the hon. Gentleman will know that cannabis contains 70 per cent. more
Mr. Hughes:
I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the cancer link. The House of Commons report last month made that abundantly clear. The medical and scientific evidence against cannabis is growing. I think that that is what an independent commission or task force would be saying, and I do not think that such a body would recommend legalisation, as the burden of evidence is moving against it. I believe, however, that we need a body that is not politically led or driven. That is why the Government got into such a mess and are still in such a mess over BSE--politics became enmeshed with science.
Mr. Newton:
I am becoming increasingly puzzled by the line that the hon. Gentleman is taking. I agree with the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman that the biggest difficulty with setting up a royal commission is that it would send a signal that something needed to be changed and that the Government were looking for someone to tell them what changes to make. We do not think that that is the case, any more than the Opposition Front-Bench team does.
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