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Drug Classification

I had just mentioned, before the Division, that a former Home Secretary had implied that there might be a review of the ABC classification system, and that Professor David Nutt, the chairman of the ACMD’s technical committee, had several times before the Committee expressed dissatisfaction with the present tripartite system. Even my hon. Friend the Minister, when he took up his post, suggested that that review might go ahead. Somewhere along the line the Home Office has changed its mind, and it has not given clear reasons, as far as I am aware. Will the Minister, especially in the light of our report and the recent RSA report, which expressed a view on the classification system similar to the Committee’s, reconsider the Home Office position and make it clear to the House? I think that the answer will probably be no, on the ground that that might detract from pursuing all other aspects of the Government’s current 10-year drug strategy, but I hope that my hon. Friend will not give that answer. Perhaps more controversial than the classification of magic mushrooms has been the classification—and, indeed, the recent reclassification—of cannabis; but what is cannabis? There appear to be upwards of 100 varieties of the Cannabis sativa plant, with more than 20 in commercial production. The strength of the main psychoactive ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, varies according to the species of plant and the part of the plant that is harvested, from about 5 per cent. to about 20 per cent. In recent years the terms ““skunk”” and ““superskunk”” have been widely used by the media to describe the varieties of cannabis containing particularly high concentrations of THC. Politicians and others—including me, occasionally—have repeated the often quoted statement that cannabis on sale on the streets today is much stronger than the cannabis that was on sale in the ‘60s. However, I have been in correspondence recently with quite a few regular users of cannabis—I did not solicit the correspondence; it was sent to me voluntarily—and my correspondents include a member of the Cannabis Assembly. They tell me that when politicians and the media make those statements, the regular users of cannabis merely laugh at us. The fact is that virtually no research has been done on street cannabis to establish either what is on sale or the concentration of THC in it. The flowering tops of unfertilised female cannabis plants, sensimilla, have always been a source of higher potency cannabis, so there is nothing new about high-strength cannabis. Why is that relevant? Those who want cannabis to be reclassified yet again from C to B argue that there is a link between that much stronger cannabis and the apparently increasing incidence of mental disease among cannabis users. Some years ago, the all-party group on drugs misuse conducted an inquiry into dual diagnosis, long before that became accepted by most professionals in the treatment arena. Obviously, a person who is mentally ill and is also a serious drug misuser needs holistic treatment, for both conditions. Previously patients had to be treated for one or other condition, but not both at the same time, which was highly unsatisfactory, and often failed. It is now generally recognised that about half of the relevant group of people become mentally ill from their abuse of drugs, licit or illicit—including alcohol—and that the rest turn to abusing drugs because they are mentally ill. In my opinion the jury is still out on whether cannabis causes mental illness. One thing is clear: we need a lot more research to establish the facts clearly. However, I am told that about 4 million people in Britain today use cannabis of one form or another from week to week—some of them from day to day. Very few of those, by comparison, become mentally ill. For users who do become mentally ill, a causal link has not yet been established between the use of cannabis and the mental illness. The plain fact is that since cannabis was reclassified as a class C drug, the use of all forms of cannabis has declined, especially among young people, contrary to the predictions made by those who opposed its reclassification during heated debates in the period between the announcement in 2002 and the reclassification in 2004. Is that not some proof that the classification given to a drug is unimportant? What is important is that the harm that all drugs cause should be publicised to everyone. The position is as follows. While the Select Committee was collecting its evidence, which shows that the ABC classification system—a table of harms that drugs cause—is not fit for purpose, the chairman of the ACMD and the chairman of its technical committee were defending the status quo while knowingly, behind the scenes, receiving evidence of which the Government, too, must have been well aware, that a much better scale of harm was possible, based on scientific evidence. I put it to the Minister: does that not put the Government in an extremely difficult position?