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Dangerous Drugs

We support the order. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has given clear advice that mephedrone is a harmful, psychoactive substance and should be classified as a class B drug within the scope of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It is right that the order should seek to capture the cathinone group, of which mephedrone is one analogue, so that those who manufacture and seek to market those synthetic substances do not simply modify the drug slightly to create a new substance that would fall outside the scope of the controls. Methylone and various other drugs would have been the next problematic substances, as the Minister has said, and it is right that those drugs, as well as mephedrone and the other cathinone analogues, are addressed by virtue of the order. However, the issue is the time that it has taken to get to this point and the process that has been followed. It is frankly absurd that the ACMD should have written to the Home Secretary before Christmas, warning of its concerns as to the prevalence and potential harms of these compounds. It would seem that the Home Office knew of this problem months before. Why did not the Government act sooner? Why does it sadly seem to have taken the reporting of the deaths of several young people to finally prompt the Government into action? It should have been possible to develop policy in a measured way, rather than reaching the sudden realisation that there was an issue because of media coverage. It has been apparent for some time that there has been an emerging problem with this group of so-called legal highs. It is desperately sad that as many as 25 deaths have been linked to mephedrone in some way, and our thoughts go to the families who have lost loved ones. The question that needs to be considered is whether any of these tragic cases could have been avoided if the Government had acted sooner and a more robust mechanism had been in place for addressing newly emerging psychoactive substances, and if that had been in place, what its effect might be. We should certainly not forget that the Government were also slow to act in responding to GBL. It took the Home Office 18 months to implement the recommendation of the ACMD that the drug should be classified. We need to learn the lessons from these experiences. What has been disturbing about mephedrone has been the way in which it has been sold. Rather than being offered by a drug dealer down a dark alley, it has been spuriously marketed on the internet as plant food or fertiliser. As the ACMD has made abundantly clear, this is a drug akin to an amphetamine, and more likely to poison than promote the growth of our petunias. This has been a con, a deception, a spurious device to subvert the medicines control legislation, to suggest that this substance was not for human consumption and therefore not being sold as a drug. It is a despicable deceit, simply aimed at entrapping the unwary. It has also exposed the inadequacies of the system for responding to new and emerging drugs in the internet age. Even though we may pass the order, we need a speedier mechanism for addressing public safety issues linked to new drugs intended for human consumption, however they may be falsely marketed. We have called for the introduction of a new temporary classification for a period of up to 12 months for newly emerging problematic substances. During this period, controls on sale, importation and supply could be imposed where public health concerns have been identified. This would also allow a period of expert input and analysis, to be provided in a considered and careful manner, as to whether a formal classification should be applied to the drug. It would also allow for specific public health alerts to be issued in a managed and focused way, without stoking up demand for the new substance, as I fear that the coverage in recent weeks has done in relation to mephedrone.