Are we making a hash of drugs classification?

Written by Dr Evan Harris MP on Wed 2nd Aug 2006

Are we making a hash of drug classification? Should the activities of the UK security services be monitored? Two reports I have been working on over the past months hit the headlines this week.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into counter-terrorism policy took me as far as Canada, to explore other countries solutions to the problems of using sensitive intelligence material in criminal trials. Our report concluded that preventing terrorism is not easy, but the Government can do more to tackle it without sacrificing our fundamental liberties in the process. In order to do this, we made recommendations including allowing intercept evidence to be used in court and working on ways to use intelligence as evidence in trials. The Government could also make it easier to charge and prosecute suspects while increasing the opportunity to question them after they have been charged.

I am also a member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology which reported this week on an investigation into the classification of drugs, part of a bigger look into the use of evidence in the Government's policy making.

Our inquiry found that the drugs classification system of successive governments is neither evidence-based, nor even evidence-aware. Rather than basing classification on scientific assessments of a drugs harm to a user, it is currently based on a hotch potch of historical assumptions and criminal penalties, sending out chaotic messages to drug users and young people. Can it be right that ecstacy, responsible for around 50 deaths a year, is in class A, the same class as heroin, responsible for 764 deaths in 2003? In our report, we recommended a more systematic approach be adopted, as developed in part by the work of one of my constituents, Professor Colin Blakemore, Head of the Medical Research Council, to arm the public with the facts about drugs and their effects.

Over the summer, I'll be doing background work on two new enquiries. One looking at human trafficking, the horrific practice of transporting people for exploitation through violence, coercion, deception or the abuse of power, and the other into scientific research institutes such as the Oxford Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.