| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the hon. Gentleman agree--I assume that he does--that one of the ways in which we can have the least adverse short-term effects for people who go to clubs and who might be tempted to get into the habit of using drugs is to have a licensing system for clubs that requires them to have proper ventilation and water supply, as some local authorities have begun to do?
Mr. Flynn: We must accept that. That is my theme: harm reduction. We are fooling ourselves if any of us believe that we will stop illegal or legal drug use. The best that we can achieve, as politicians, is to ensure the least harmful results from drugs. There should be chill-out rooms. People should not take the drug alone. They should take water, but no more than a pint an hour.
We all feel the same about the case over which there was so much publicity and we all want to say to that family how much we sympathise with them and want to give them a hug. There is no worse bereavement than the untimely death of a young healthy child. That grief will live with the families for ever. It is not, however, the only death involved. That death would have been avoidable, with proper, timely medical advice and if people realised the danger of taking water.
I quoted earlier the figure of 54 deaths in which Ecstasy was mentioned as a possible cause. One was a recent death involving a young girl--also the daughter of a policeman--who took one and a half Ecstasy tablets and between 20 to 30 co-proxamol tablets, which would have killed her four times over. She also took an unknown quantity of alcohol.
There is no question that that girl died from the co-proxamol tablets. She took three times the lethal dose. The "Today" programme said that the death was due to Ecstasy, which was unlikely. The case would be included in the 54 deaths.
Thirty-four people have died from Ecstasy use alone. There has been only one death in Holland. In most countries there have been no deaths. This is a particularly British problem because of the way in which the rave culture has developed in overheated rooms without ventilation or chill-out areas. We will not reduce those deaths by telling people not to take Ecstasy. They will not listen to us. What we say to them is distorted. We will do it by asking them to take proper precautions. Nor will they take any notice of what we are saying about many other drugs.
The best thing we can say about prisons today is that we have one gaol out of the hundred plus in this country which is almost drug free. We can have a programme that
achieves five drug-free prisons. Gaols are closed communities with great walls outside and with people being searched on their way in and every gaol in Britain is awash with illegal drug use. It is endemic in almost every prison. Prisoners can choose which drugs to have. They have a range to pick from. If we fail to control drug use in prisons, how on earth can we succeed in reducing it or controlling it in clubs and schools?
As the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey said, driving the use of drugs is not the fact that it is enjoyable or wicked, but profit. The black market is making money out of drugs. All the way from the fields in Colombia to the school gate, someone gets a cut in the pyramid selling of drugs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North said, market forces are behind it. Our aim should be to collapse the drug black market, to accept that drug use is inevitable, and to find out how best to control it.
I have never advocated decriminalising any drugs except cannabis for medical use, but, at the end of the royal commission, we will see not paradise on earth or a drug-free Britain, drugs distributed by doctors in a proper way or by businesses that can be vigorously controlled. It is not a perfect system. The way in which alcohol is distributed is far from perfect. We should have more limits on the sale of alcohol, but we will not stop drugs getting into the hands of people who are most affected by them.
There are two vulnerable groups. I heard a Minister say that, if we decriminalise drugs, school children can get hold of them. Where is he living? Hardly one school child in this country cannot get hold of drugs. If it happens under a different regime and a licensed seller of drugs was found to be giving a drug to children or to another vulnerable group--such as schizophrenics or people suffering from mental illness--he would lose his licence. There is a good chance of reducing harm under that system.
The Leader of the House gave a selective quote about Holland, but the view of the Dutch Government is different. The view of a right-wing think tank published by the Institute of Economic Affairs was different. It said that the Dutch experience had resulted in two important changes. One was the reduction in the use of soft drugs, cannabis and Ecstasy among young people, principally because it becomes boring and it is not glamorous, sexy, thrilling or illegal. That is what happens when it becomes a legal activity. The other change was to separate young people who were taking soft drugs from the hard drug market.
In this country, anyone who has to use drugs will have to cross the boundary of legality into the world of illegality. They will be exposed not just to soft drug, but hard drug pushers. That is where the danger lies.
Mr. Spring:
Let me tell the hon. Gentleman just a bit more about the place that he so greatly admires--Holland. The net result is that cannabis is infinitely stronger than 20 or 30 years ago. There are now variants of cannabis that cause hallucinations and psychiatric disorders. It is all produced in Amsterdam, which, as a result of this absurd liberal policy, is the place for exporting problems throughout Europe. It is a disgrace.
Mr. Flynn:
The hon. Gentleman is wrong, but I will not take him up on the details of where cannabis is
Those people who are using cannabis in Holland now are not using hard drugs. The average age of the hard drug user has increased to the late twenties from the early twenties.
Mr. Flynn:
Well, consider the decisions of the Dutch Government. Ask the Dutch embassy to provide information; it is happy to do so. It says passionately that the policy has worked for Holland, but of course it is not perfect. The problem is that Holland, acting on its own, is attracting abusers of drugs from all countries.
Let us put this in context. How many people does cannabis kill? Will the hon. Member for BurySt. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) tell me how many people have died from the use of skunk cannabis? The figure is easy to remember--zero. No one has been poisoned by cannabis abuse. It is almost impossible to be. It is a substance that has been used for 3,000 years at least, it is less poisonous than aspirin, and it leaves people in a benign state. I could give the figures for the other drugs. Heroin kills--
Mr. Spring:
I dispute entirely what the hon. Gentleman is saying, because I have spoken to drugs professionals and their emphatic view is that those young people who may be prone to schizophrenia or similar mental disorders, who take a strong cannabis-like drug like skunk, can be driven into more extreme cases of mental disorder and possible suicide.
Mr. Flynn:
I do not dispute that. I am only giving the figures that the Government provide. Of course all drugs are harmful. The number of people per year killed by cannabis is zero; by Ecstasy, seven; and by heroin, 100. The Government figure for paracetamol is 200; interestingly, the latest Library figure is 580. For all medicinal drugs, the figure is 2,500; for alcohol, up to 40,000; and for cigarettes, 100,000.
I know that those figures are crude because different numbers take each drug, but they show us the hypocrisy behind what we are saying. When we say to young people, "You have this drug that binds you together as a community in your rave culture," and we preach to them, as was said this morning from the Front Bench, that our message is that drug use is bad, and we say it possibly from one of the 15 bars in the House, with a cigarette in one hand, a glass of whisky in the other and a couple of paracetamol in our pocket for our headaches, it is right that they turn to us and say, "Hypocrite!" All drug use is bad--it is all damaging--but because, as a generation, we have accepted certain drugs of abuse ourselves, our view of what is happening with young people becomes distorted.
We have got ourselves into a hopeless mess with the prison system. Two defendants from Gwent faced court charges and were found guilty, for the second and third time, of very serious offences and their barristers,
in different courts, on different days, with different defendants, eight months apart, put up the defence, "This person cannot be sent to gaol because, if he is, he might fall into the habits that he did last time of becoming a heroin addict." In both cases, the courts decided that that person should not go to gaol, and they got away with lighter sentences in the community.
What an extraordinary indictment it is that drug abusers get away without gaol sentences because we cannot control drug use in prisons. The answer that was given from the Front Bench this morning is not the answer. There is a great deal of tolerance of cannabis use in prisons, and the reason is that when people are on the "wacky baccy" they are quiet, passive and easy to handle. If they are on alcohol, they are violent and abusive.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |