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Addiction to Medicines

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr. Taylor. This is my valedictory address as chairman of the all-party group on drugs misuse. I hope to hand over the group's chairmanship this very afternoon, after serving in that capacity for 10 years. I am sure that I will leave it in good hands. I am introducing this debate on addiction to and physical dependence on prescription and over-the-counter medicines in the hope that the Government will take the issue on board when they make policies in future. It is now recognised by many that the war on drugs has caused displacement—substance displacement, geographical displacement and even policy displacement. The press kit for the United Nations 2006 International Narcotics Control Board annual report states, at page 11:""The abuse and trafficking of prescription drugs is set to exceed illicit drug abuse, warned the International Narcotics Board in its Annual Report released today"." That was on 1 March 2007. The passage continues:""The Board added that medication containing narcotic drugs and/or psychotropic substances is even a drug of first choice in many cases, and not abused as a substitute. Such prescription drugs have effects similar to illicit drugs when taken in inappropriate quantities and without medical supervision. The 'high' they provide is comparable to practically every illicitly manufactured drug."" Why should a person risk a fine or prison sentence when perfectly legal substances can give them a buzz equal to that obtained from street drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine? As we increase the penalties for those who use controlled drugs, as we have done, again, for cannabis users, or increase the number of classified substances—perhaps it will be khat or other legal highs next—people will seek alternatives to give them a buzz. Stronger enforcement merely leads to what I and others term substance displacement. Concerns have been rising in recent years about the number of people who have become physically dependent on or addicted to legal substances, even overdosing on them, which has sometimes resulted in tragic deaths. The high-profile death of the famous Heath Ledger was only one example of very many. Soon after my election to Parliament in 1997 I came across a former policeman from Dumfriesshire, called David Grieve, who had been addicted to cough mixture containing codeine. He had been drinking litres of it every day. As a result he lost his job in the police force, and he started a charity, called Over-Count, which he still runs today, to give online advice to those who have become addicted to over-the-counter medications. Young Americans who are keen to avoid the risks associated with taking controlled, or street, drugs, have been pharming for several years now, which means that they have been taking cocktails of prescription and over-the-counter medicines to get their high. The all-party group on drugs misuse decided to launch an inquiry in the 2007-08 parliamentary Session into physical dependence on and addiction to prescription and over-the-counter medication. We published our report in January and it has attracted a lot of media attention. During our research we came across two other reports, one published in the state of Victoria, in Australia, and another in Scotland, whose findings are very similar to ours. Our inquiry was carried out along the lines of a parliamentary Select Committee inquiry. We issued a call for evidence, using a press release, and then on the basis of the more than 100 pieces of written evidence that we received we invited two groups of witnesses to give oral evidence. One group represented organisations such as the royal colleges, trade associations and regulators, such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, as well as the pharmaceutical companies, of course. The other group was of patients who had been affected, or organisations representing them. My researcher, Gemma Reay, organised the inquiry and wrote the final report, which can be accessed through a link from my website at www.brianiddon.org.uk, or through the DrugScope website. The evidence that we received suggests that there are two main groups of legal substances that are causing significant problems: the benzodiazepine tranquillisers and their successor drugs, the so-called zed drugs, and products containing codeine. Nevertheless, we recognise that millions of people have benefited worldwide from the use of those drugs.