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Controls on Legal Highs

I welcome this debate and many of the steps that the new Government are taking, which follow the previous Administration's effective and determined approach to tackling this difficult problem. I am glad to have the chance to speak in this debate, because there is a problem with the way we discuss so-called legal highs. Perhaps we need to find a better way of branding such drugs, which cause a great deal of harm to individuals and communities. A number of issues that the Minister mentioned were also big issues in Barrow. I want briefly to mention a number of matters. First, he made an interesting point about the responsibility of traders to act in a way that minimises the harm to which young people can be subjected. I am glad that he gave an example of traders acting responsibly. However, I have to say that in Barrow, my personal experience prior to the election was not the same: local shops refused to cease stocking mephedrone before the temporary band was put in place. Such an example calls into question whether the new powers that the Minister is suggesting, which are welcome, will go far enough in the important interim period that he rightly identified—in which a drug becomes controversial and notorious and the process to put a temporary ban in placed is started, and during which sales can increase. The point made about the legality of so-called legal high drugs before they are in the public domain is apposite. We knew from personal experience—I should say that that this is not my personal experience—in Barrow of a substance called Shake 'n' Vac: a repackaging of mephedrone, which received a lot of attention during the mephedrone debate. That substance was sold in quantities of 1 gram for £15, purportedly as carpet cleaner, with the words, ““Not for human consumption”” written on it. It was laughable to suggest that the traders in question might believe that it was carpet cleaner, and it was clear that they did not. Is there not a way of immediately enforcing current law if it is sufficient to stop such products being mis-sold? If that is not possible under the current law, should it not be tightened? Could there not be a power to place an immediate suspension on suspicious substances, even before a temporary ban? If that power were used wrongly, traders could seek financial recompense, but in cases that seem as clear-cut as those experienced in my area, the chances of success would be slight.