Drug Misuse

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:02 pm on 9 June 1995.

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Photo of Diane Abbott Diane Abbott Member, Labour Party National Executive Committee 12:02, 9 June 1995

I represent an inner-city constituency in London with one of the most serious drug problems in the country. Anyone who is as close to the crisis caused by drugs as my constituents and I are must question whether the Government are yet taking the problem seriously enough. It is hard to disagree with the detail of much of the White Paper, but in my view it is a well-meaning but essentially bureaucratic response to a problem with complex economic and social roots which the document does not begin to touch.

It has been rightly said that drugs are a nationwide problem, but they are especially a problem for the inner city. The British crime survey showed that, whereas in the inner cities 16 per cent. of 14 to 15-year-olds had experimented with drugs, in rural areas only 7 per cent. had done so. I shall talk briefly about my experience of dealing with and working with the consequences of drug abuse in an area such as Stoke Newington. It is easy to discuss the issue in the abstract, but I want to talk about what the drug epidemic in our inner city means in terms of the cost in human lives. Week after week in my surgery, I see middle-aged women who may have worked all their lives and have seen their sons destroyed by the drugs trade. Many young men and women get involved with drugs because drugs are fashionable, glamorous and seen as a high road to money. The reality for 99 per cent. of them is that their lives are ruined. If they are fortunate, they keep out of prison or mental hospital but, increasingly, the prisons and mental homes around London are full of the victims of the drug epidemic in the inner city.

There is also the environmental cost to the inner city. It cannot be acceptable that law-abiding people who live on council estates have to walk past drug peddlers to go to the shops or post office. On the same landing as those people live on, there may be a council flat entirely given over to drug retailing. In areas such as the east end of London, it does not matter whether one knows anyone taking or dealing in drugs; on many of our estates, it is hard to escape the environmental consequences of the drug trade, whether they be syringes in the sand pit at Clissold park in Stoke Newington or drug dealers on the street corner. That is the reality that the House must address.

One of the biggest costs that my constituents pay because of the drug trade is the cost of crime. To feed a hard drug habit nowadays can cost up to £1,000 a week. Where do people get the money? They get it from crime. Surveys show that over a third of crack users make the money to buy drugs through dealing. There is a tendency in the House to distinguish between dealers and users, but all too often they are the same people. A third of crack users get the money through dealing, a quarter through theft and one in seven through prostitution. Many of the petty burglaries, mindless assaults and much of the street crime in many parts of the inner city are caused by people trying to feed a drug habit.

Even worse than the cost in human lives or of having to push a baby in a buggy past drug dealers on Stoke Newington High street and worse than the crime is the rising incidence of violence and the increasing number of people armed with guns who are connected with drug distribution in London. In 1993, there were 10 murders and 21 attempted murders associated with the crack cocaine trade alone. Those figures are spiralling. The problem is that many of the young men—it is mainly young men—who go armed in the pursuance of drug distribution also use guns for all sorts of relatively petty domestic altercations. That frightens me because I live in the community. I am not talking about people from a report or what I have read about, but about my friends' and relatives' children. The rising number of young men involved with drugs in inner London and other inner cities who are armed with guns is a direct consequence of the drug epidemic in our big cities.

I cannot argue with much of the detail of the White Paper, but it does not begin to constitute an effective response to the drugs crisis that is engulfing some of our communities. Many hon. Members want to speak, so I will not expand my remarks.

Any effective response must seriously consider why people take drugs in the first place. The reasons are complex. I believe that some people have an addictive personality. Style, fashion, and street credibility are involved. Conservative Members have tried to challenge this, but there is no question that drug abuse is often connected with conditions of poverty and despair. Conservative Members do not like this, but we have to face the fact that, sadly, many young men in our inner cities regard dealing and trading in drugs as a viable economic route out of poverty. I do not condone that, but it is a reality. To talk about a little money here for education, about a few leaflets there and about meetings with chief executives and directors of social services does not begin to address the reality of young men who see drug dealing as their only route to acquiring the material trappings to which they believe that they are entitled. Until we have a strategy against drugs which takes that point on board and deals with it, we are far from having an effective strategy.

There is little point in dealing with the drug epidemic in narrow terms of education and meetings of bureaucrats without lifting our sights overseas to where the drugs are produced. The major drug production areas are some of the poorest countries in the world. Some of the most heavily indebted third-world countries are also the countries most heavily involved in drug production. It is in countries where the prices of traditional agricultural products such as sugar, bananas and coffee have collapsed that the rural agriculturists turn to drug production. It is no use Ministers telling me that they are serious about the war on drugs when their colleagues across Whitehall are pursuing trade, economic and aid policies that encourage thousands of small agriculturists to turn to drugs production.

What are we to say to small farmers in the rural Caribbean or in South America? They see that the price of coffee has collapsed and that there is no market for their bananas and sugar. They see that their only means of feeding and clothing their children and of making a life is through drug production. If this country is serious about the war on drugs, we have to tie in what we do about trade and third-world poverty with what we do here about drugs.

We also have to look at the territories that are used not primarily for drug production, but for transhipment. When one goes to some of the islands in the Caribbean and sees the relatively aged boats that the customs men have to use to chase the drug dealers compared with the state-of-the-art speedboats and helicopters that the drug dealers have, it is no surprise that the islands are increasingly used as transhipment points. Again, if we are serious, we have to start by trying to choke off the drugs trade not only at the point of production, but at the point of transhipment. A lot of money could usefully be spent on ensuring that the Customs and Excise men of the islands that are used as transhipment points have exactly the same high-tech boats, helicopters and equipment to stop the drugs coming through their borders as the drug dealers do.

I now come to what we are doing in the United Kingdom. There must be more money for Customs and Excise and more money for staffing to enable Customs and Excise staff to deal effectively with the drugs coming through our borders. We also need to look overall at the resources that we give to the drug problem. The Government talk about 4 per cent. of new resources; yet addiction has increased by 13 per cent. Offences related to drugs have increased by 11 per cent. No one in this debate has raised the question of the relationship between drug abuse in London and homelessness. We must look at the fact that 80 per cent. of drug users in London are unemployed. I am not saying that unemployment and homelessness lead directly to drug abuse, but for Ministers to say that they are serious about the drug problem when they do not look at that statistical relationship makes me wonder.

Especially in relation to women drug abusers, we must also look at the relationship between drug use and child abuse. One London clinic looked at a group of women drug addicts with whom it was dealing and found that 36 per cent. of those drug addicts were the victims of sexual abuse. The problem with this debate and the problem with the White Paper is that they look at the drug problem in narrow, theoretical and bureaucratic terms. In fact, this is a problem with global implications and complex social causes.

As well as giving resources to Customs and Excise and as well as trying to see the links with problems such as homelessness, we need to consider more resources for the police. Increasingly, the police are able to track down drug dealers only by using more and more resources and more and more money. Drug users are to the forefront in using new technology. Anyone who walks down Stoke Newington high street on a sunny day will see more expensive portable phones used by more people than he or she will ever see using them in the City of London. It is no longer a matter of policemen standing on street corners and saying, "You're nicked." They often have to set up prolonged surveillance arrangements. They have to undertake prolonged undercover work. They use video cameras to record transactions. They have to obtain corroborative evidence that will stand up in court. All those things cost money, and budgets are being stretched.

It is no use having White Papers which tell us that a little more money should be provided for education. If we are to counter the multi-million-pound trade, we must make the necessary money available for the countervailing agencies, including Customs and Excise and the police.

I live in an area in which the drug epidemic causes human tragedy day on day. I have had the opportunity to travel to America to visit its inner cities and to see the devastation wrought by drug misuse in areas such as Harlem, parts of Chicago and parts of Washington. In Harlem, hundreds of babies are born every month addicted to crack. I do not want to see the tragedy that has engulfed the inner cities of the United States engulf my people and my community in the east end of London, or in any of our inner cities.

We cannot argue with the White Paper as it stands, but if the Government were serious about fighting drugs they would put forward a far more widely encompassing strategy and would take on board some of the economic and social matters that I have mentioned. It is easy to talk about drug abuse in theory, to read reports and to blame others. The experience in America is that when the problem comes out of the ghetto and engulfs the children of the middle and professional classes, it is too late. I hope that the House will not wait until it is too late before embarking on a serious strategy and war against drugs.