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Drug Strategy

I welcome this topical debate. The reason for its topicality was the drugs strategy, but there has also recently been a leak from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the panel of 23 experts who are apparently going to recommend that there should be no reclassification of cannabis. That leak reminds us that we need to ensure that our decisions are based on evidence and science if we are serious about tackling the scourge of drugs, as the hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) suggested. The leak also prompts a number of questions, which I hope the Minister will be able to answer. If the leak is accurate, is he in a position to confirm whether he will follow the advice of the advisory council? Will he confirm that, if the Government chose not to follow that advice, it would be the first time that that had happened? Will he also tell us whether he has considered putting the advisory council on a more formal footing, to allow more expertise to be brought in and perhaps to give it a wider remit? Such a change could create the equivalent of a standing royal commission to look at the issue of drugs, to ensure that we were using science and evidence-based facts to devise the most effective policy for tackling the problem.