In the autumn of 2001, I attended the first meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee for its report, The Government s Drugs Policy: Does It Work? I took about as hardline a position against drugs that an MP could. But while working on the report over the last year or so, my opinions have changed. I have listened to hundreds of arguments for and against a review of the government s drugs policies, from a wide variety of key witnesses. They have included Commander Brian Paddick from Lambeth police; Keith Hellawell, the former special adviser to the home secretary; various medical experts from the UK and abroad; representatives from the NHS; voluntary organisations such as the Youth Parliament; and, finally, the parents of those whose lives have been lost or ruined by drug use.
It was the eloquence and extraordinary calm of those parents and relatives who swung me away from my previous views and toward the arguments for a change in policy. They were normal people who had been through tragedy, and yet there they were, talking adroitly to a televised committee about the need for major reform in a subject area which is still very much taboo.
The main recommendations of the report were to reclassify ecstasy, from class A to class B, and cannabis, from class B to class C, and to recommend the medicinal use of cannabis for those who GPs may consider to need it. The general conclusion of the committee was that the government should now concentrate on helping those who suffer from harder drugs rather than punishing those individuals even further with a criminal justice system ill-equipped to understand the issues, poor social service provision, and NHS services which in some cases simply cannot deal with the most serious addicts. This was a theme constantly picked up on by the relatives.
One witness from the north-east of England, the mother of a heroin addict, said; I tried to access social services but there were no services and, not only were there no services, but there was the shame and blame culture where they said to him that if he could not manage on 20mls of methadone after he had waited six months, then it was his fault and not theirs. Then it would be my fault because I was not tough enough. Let s face it, I am not going to be well until he is well .
There are still contradictions in drugs policy, in this country and throughout the rest of the western world. The media will report sensationally any overdose by a young person who has taken ecstasy, or if a pill has been found in the home of a minor celebrity, or if a person has been attacked by someone reacting violently after taking crack cocaine. But the fact that these incidents are miniscule next to the thousands of violent acts carried out after excessive alcohol consumption, or the thousands of lives lost each year due to smoking, are never given any balance by our press.
Let us not underestimate the significance of the important first step toward a more responsible and at last progressive approach to drug policy that the committee took with its report. The committee became the forum for a most mature debate, a million miles away from the shock-horror coverage that we have to endure in much of our press. With this in mind, it is my view that the report was not only potentially beneficial to those affected by drugs, but it was also beneficial to politics. There is a view that people are uninterested in parliament because they feel that parliament is uninterested in them. We were able to combat that perception and reveal that parliament can be an institution very much in touch with real life and dispel the caricature that MPs never get to know what is really going on in the country.