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Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2010

My Lords, I must declare an interest as a member of the technical committee of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. I am also on the board of the UK Drug Policy Commission. It is from that background that I, first, congratulate the Minister on summarising the evidence about the cathinones so well. I have gone through the evidence myself and am most impressed at his command of it. I reinforce the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and indeed by the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, because there is a problem. The law needs to give a message that this is not safe, while there is a perception among young people that if something is legal then it is probably not too bad. However, we have an increasing experimentation culture and an increasing number of bizarre chemicals coming in, apparently being manufactured—I say apparently because I have only seen second-hand evidence—in parts of China and the far East, and so on. There are those chemical factories producing new substances, and the youngsters will experiment with them. The other problem we have is the gangs, with the gang culture and gun culture that goes along with them, so this is incredibly complex. I intervene simply to make a plea to whoever comes in after the general election, which I believe we all know we are facing. We need to have a long, hard look at the whole issue of drugs in our society. We may have to completely review how we handle them because when we ban one thing, unfortunately, it sometimes becomes appealing. I personally think that the concept of banning the whole group of cathinone chemicals is very clever, and I completely support it because it means that whichever bit you attach to the molecule you will be capturing the whole group as new ones come along. However, I hasten to say—although I dread saying it—that as we sit here today there are a whole bunch of new chemicals being manufactured out there, which somebody will try to persuade some young person to experiment with. There is that whole question of what is going on in our society, when those youngsters just want to experiment—and experiment with things that the rest of us would not touch with a bargepole. Having said that, I support the Minister in bringing this order forward.