With just a fortnight until the Government’s mephedrone ban comes into effect, Lib Dem MPs Chris Huhne and Evan Harris have challenged the legality of the move (though the party has supported the ban itself). Today’s Guardian reports:
Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said the six resignations from the government’s advisory council on the misuse of drugs had left it inquorate and legally unable to issue formal advice to the home secretary. He also questioned how a decision to ban mephedrone without first publishing the council’s report on its potential harms complied with new government guidelines on the treatment of scientific advice.
He was backed up by the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, who also questioned how confident ministers were that the ban was being implemented in a “lawful manner and cannot be challenged in the courts”.
The 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act says that a home secretary cannot ban a substance without first taking formal advice from the advisory council on the misuse of drugs. The Government maintains the resignations have no material efect on its decision. The issue will be debated in the House of Commons on 8th April.
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9 Comments
We should all be protesting this ban, it’s time for a meow meow uprising.
I’d watch out, meow meow uprisings can get out of hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNwCojCJ3-Q
Ah yes. We don’t have any real evidence that it’s harmful, the experts are quitting because they’re being told to deliver politics instead of science, but some kids seem to like it so it must be banned. We can’t have young people enjoying themselves – why would they vote for the government then?
Yeah, but let’s be clear – they were not, at least from their words on Tuesday p.m in the house, questioning the merit or morality of such a ban, in spite of party policy that agrees that the classification system is not fit for purpose and demanding a proper commission on how we move forward with drugs. In fact all three of the Lib Dems who spoke (Harris, Hune and Mulholland) appeared rather to be saying that this prohibition should have been taken earlier and were there simply to criticise (and rightly on this point) the shambles the government has created with the collapse of their relationship with the ACMD.
Time gained, if possible, by delaying a ban would be welcome (though already the problem of supply has been created by a summary ban on imports – so the harms already reported of “contamination” will already start having a greater effect as the less scrupulous dealers eke out what they have left with Vim. But such time *must* be backed by work towards a safer and saner alternative to prohibition.
This is absolutely crucial – and certainly so for my continuing membership of the party – we know prohibition causes greater harms, we know it leads to additional deaths, from contamination, ignorance, and the organised crime networks into whose hands prohibition laws push the trade. I will not support a party whose members of parliament vote for something that will predictably, foreseeably, nay inevitably cause more harm and more deaths than the ill it seeks to solve. They are tacitly supporting not merely the criminalisation of many but what amounts to state sanctioned murder. This is beyond the moral rights of legislators.
I’ll be very glad to hear that it is not their, or the party’s intention to support this knee-jerk (or any other) prohibition measure. If someone can reassure me that’s the case!
Incidentally, it is my understanding (though of course it has not been published) that the ACMD report does not actually assess the harm of Mephedrone or anything else they intend to ban, because the science has not been done. They have assessed the reported effects and matched them up with existing prohibited substances to give it a recommended classification, but they have not actually concluded that these effects (many of which are whjat the users want to experience of course) are delivered at greater or lesser harm than anything else.
It is quite clear then that logically they are quite literally proposing to sign the death warrants and criminal records of more people in the aim of banning the “having fun” aspects of the drug rather than the “harm” of the drug.
It is unconscionable, and if Lib Dems support it they will do so without me.
Drive the users underground and the sources criminal. That’s how we solve legal drug abuse in this country…
Jock: let’s allow politicians to be politicians a little bit, shall we?
Appalling as drug policy is, every pol assumes (and almost certainly rightly) that a liberalisation policy will be a phenomenally hard if not impossible sell in this Land of the Mail and the Sun, and that to be caught in possession of such a policy with intent to sell, while within 100
yards of a school buildingdays of a general election, would result in being sent down for at least five years.It seems to me that our front bench have tried to find a way of opposing precipitate action and hopefully injecting a tiny little bit of rationality into the mainstream debate without getting blown up by the anti-drugs hysteria, and thus wrecking their chances of achieving real influence at the coming election over far wider areas of concern than the country’s (I’ll say it again) appalling but almost unreformable drug policy. I’d give them credit for that, in a highly imperfect world.
“Kids think ‘cos it’s legal it’s safe”.
These are the same kids who drink alcohol until they vomit on other kids ‘cos they think it’s safe.
I’ve responded to this on my own blog – whilst I admit I was probably being a bit harsh on Evan and maybe Chris, and apologise for that, I still believe the tack the party is taking on this is wrong, and that now is exactly the time to have it out.
Appalling decision by the party to support this ban. We all know here why – that does not excuse it. I am sure that if we stood up and said we were for a liberalisation policy, separating ourselves from the duopoly, we could get credit.
But at the end of the day I don’t care: prohibition is wrong, doesn’t work and causes more harm. There is no justification for this caricature of knee-jerk political reactions.
I wouldn’t leave the party for it, but I do feel disinhearted.