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Drug Strategy

We may all be united, but there are different points of view on this matter. There may be a vagueness in being united about the fact that we will do something about it, but what politician would say publicly or privately, or would even think to themselves, ““Well, we'll do nothing about the issue of drugs, and pretend it isn't there.”” One of the problems with drugs debates in this House—this weakness has hidden some of the successes of the Government's drugs policy—is the use and misuse of statistics. The key weakness in the Government's drugs strategy is not the strategy itself, but the assessment of outcomes and the precise measurements. Let us consider the example of cannabis. Everybody knows, and the research on this will soon come through to show—it is only just emerging—that there has been a huge fall in cannabis use. The cause is pretty obvious to me: it is called the smoking ban. That makes me particularly pleased that I voted for the smoking ban.