---

Drugs Policy

I am very much aware of it. I did a scientific analysis some eight years ago of what was happening in drug production in four countries—Switzerland, Sweden, Britain and the Netherlands. It was an attempt to examine the effects and the level of drug abuse. On one point I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East: the level of drug use in Holland is lower than it is here. Sweden, from a very low base, had the biggest increase. The United Kingdom came out worst, and it remains the worst in all outcomes. Switzerland has tried a number of brave experiments, particularly in the way of prescribing heroin. That has been a great success as a way of reducing crime. However, I want to mention our greatest failure internationally, and the one I feel despair about. I have addressed the Commonwealth of Independent States, the former communist bodies. The worst thing that has happened internationally on drugs concerns them, because when the Berlin wall fell, none of the communist countries had a drug problem; many had alcohol problems, but none had a drug problem. They came to us and said, ““You in the west have had this problem for a long time. You guys know about it. What do we do? How do we deal with drugs?”” But instead of getting a formula in which we said, ““Well, this has worked,”” those countries got back a babble of conflicting views from all parts of Europe. They repeated our remedies and inherited our problems. Those states have 25 million addicts now. If we had adopted a model that worked 10 or 25 years ago, we could have handed it on. I believe that such a model exists in its best state in Portugal now. I urge all hon. Members to approach the matter with an open mind. I have memories of previous debates of this kind, and in particular of David Mellor, in about 1990, announcing that we could be absolutely certain of one thing—that heroin use had peaked. We had about 90,000 addicts then. When I spoke on the subject about 18 months ago, the number was 280,000, and it is now 320,000. I recall another debate—we used to have a three-hour debate on Friday mornings—when the Government and Opposition spokesmen had to leave the Chamber because they both needed a fix of the addictive drug to which they were enslaved; they both needed to go out and smoke. I am sure that later in the evening they would wander off to any of the 16 bars in this place, decrying young people's use of drugs—with a cigarette in one hand, a glass of whisky in the other, and a couple of paracetamol in their top pockets for the headache that they were going to get the next morning. We behave with hypocrisy and incompetence on drugs. I do not want to go into the wasted years that we have had, but can we just say where the United Kingdom is now, and put aside tabloid pressure? Let us forget about what people say, and the abuse that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East will get, and say we know what is right, and what works, and we know that the policies that we have pursued for 39 years have given us the worst drug problems and the worst outcomes in Europe. We had tough policies in '71. They did not work, so we had even tougher policies—and they did not work, so we went on again to still tougher policies. There were great plaudits for all the politicians putting them through. Each time, our problems went up and up. That has not happened in Portugal. In the Netherlands, there is some kind of control. The glamour has been taken away. The joy of forbidden fruit has been taken out of using cannabis. People can go to a cannabis café and have a cannabis cake with their grandmother. Where is the fun in that? Part of the attraction, here, is the illegality of drugs. Part of the problem, and the reason why people die here, is the illegality of drugs. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East mentioned that people can, if they get control of their heroin and know its quality and strength, become heroin addicts and live into their nineties. Many people have. There are homes in the Netherlands for geriatrics who are heroin addicts. They can be maintained. People here who are unfortunate enough to be addicted must take their heroin from illegal sources, from those who produce products that may well be toxic or contaminated. They take them in unhygienic surroundings in a dark alley. That is why prohibition is killing people.