---

Drug Strategy

Despite the Minister's fine words, the UK has the highest level of problem drug use in Europe. In 10 years, total recorded drugs offences have increased by 43 per cent., and, by the Government's own admission, class A drug use remains stubbornly high. The Government's latest strategy to ““protect families and communities”” has therefore been greeted with understandable scepticism and, in some quarters, derision. Class A drug use generates an estimated £15.4 billion in crime and health costs every year. The drug and alcohol charity Addaction estimates that since this Government came to power the total cost amounts to £110 billion, which is more than the NHS budget. It is a question of not only the monetary cost, but the human cost of drug addiction. In 2006, the number of confirmed hepatitis C infections reported from laboratories in England rose to 8,346—a rise of 10 per cent. in a year, with the Health Protection Agency forecasting an increasing number of deaths, transplants and hospital admissions for hepatitis-related end-stage liver disease. The single biggest risk factor is injecting drug use. Illicit drugs are cheaper than they have ever been. Since 1997, the average price of cocaine has fallen by a third and the price of heroin has dropped by 40 per cent. Even the simplest economic and market analysis tells me that if the price has gone down that much, the Government have failed to control supply. That is reflected by declining enforcement. In 2005, 1,082 people were prosecuted for the unlawful importation or exportation of drugs and 1,061 were convicted. In 2006, the number had fallen to 904 prosecutions and 870 convictions. The Government now try to offer us a new force to secure our porous borders, but this shiny new agency with its shiny new uniforms will have no police representation and no new powers of arrest. In reality, it is the existing border control badged under a different name. The effect is that it will not be able to arrest a single person caught with drugs. So much for the Prime Minister's promise that this force would have police powers to deal with those suspected of criminal offences. What of the Prime Minister's other statements about changing cannabis from a class C to a class B drug? Last September, he said:"““Why I want to upgrade cannabis and make it more a drug that people worry about is because we don't want to send out a message—just like with alcohol—to teenagers, that we accept these things.””" He was right about alcohol. The Government's ill-conceived licensing policies have led to more violence on our streets late at night and to hospital A and E departments bearing the brunt, with alcohol admissions rising by a quarter. What is the Prime Minister waiting for? Why the delay? What more persuasion can he possibly need? Super-strength skunk cannabis now accounts for some 80 per cent. of all seizures. Its links with psychosis, paranoia and schizophrenia become more apparent every day. Even the Association of Chief Police Officers, which initially supported the decision to downgrade cannabis, now states:"““The 2004 change in classification of cannabis has inadvertently provided an opportunity for the greater and now flourishing illegal market in the production, distribution and use of cannabis throughout the UK and potentially beyond.””" We need action, not more delay. I challenge the Under-Secretary to make a commitment here and now to reclassifying cannabis. He has the evidence, the power and, frankly, the duty to do so.