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Drugs Policy

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his courage in holding the debate today. It is a welcome contribution to the general debate that we should be having on the subject. As he will know, Brighton and Hove has a high rate of deaths related to heroine. Does he agree that drug users are not necessarily criminals and should be rehabilitated and assisted, and that part of that involves the recognition that criminalisation is perhaps inappropriate, particularly for marijuana? Does he also agree that the previous Government's decision to declassify marijuana to class C perhaps sent the wrong message because it was neither one way, nor the other, and people buying the drugs are still buying them from criminal gangs? Either it should have been legalised, or the message that should have been sent out was that it was a harmful drug. We really need a full, independent review of the whole situation, without the emotion that seems to come from all sides.