Stephen Phillips: ...which one, for they are all much the same. Outside, not 100 feet away, a mother sits in the stifling heat with her children engaged in whatever business she has, selling mangoes, or coconuts, or smoked fish to passers-by perhaps. She survives and provides for her family on an income of less than a dollar a day. There is no father, for he passed away some time ago from a virus with which...
Stephen Phillips: I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. If we look at the difference between recreational drug usage and smoking, we will see that the harm is so much greater with smoking. For every 1,000 smokers who are admitted to hospital, 123 of them are suffering from health problems directly caused by smoking. If we look at 1,000 drug users who are admitted to hospital, only two...
Stephen Phillips: ...over the possession of drugs. Does he regard it as an oddity, as I do, that a person could be denied a visa to go to the United States, in some parts of which marijuana can be bought and smoked quite legally, just because they have a criminal conviction in this country for having used cannabis?
Stephen Phillips: ...—the reputational risk to this country. These cases are settled, albeit with no admission of liability, in circumstances where, as was said earlier, much of the world will say that there is no smoke without fire. People might say that the British Government would not settle these cases unless there was some truth in the allegations, which does this country enormous damage overseas. It...