JOHN HUMPHRYS:                Even by her own fiery standards, 
Ann Widdecombe raised a real storm when she made her speech to the Tories 
in Bournemouth last week. She said that a much tougher approach should 
be taken against people who possess or use soft drugs such as cannabis. 
They should be fined and end up with a criminal record. Well that brought 
the wrath of the liberal establishment down on her head but not only the 
liberal establishment. Many of her own colleagues in the Tory Party were 
horrified. This morning we discover from the Mail on Sunday that seven 
members of the Shadow Cabinet no less have admitted they tried smoking 
a bit of pot when they were youngsters. What's interesting about all is 
that the tone of the debate, though the drugs seem to be changing, no so 
long ago we'd have seen enormous political support for such a hard-line. 

                        
                          So have things changed, 
well previous few MPs are prepared to argue for a positively liberal approach 
on soft drugs, one of those who is is the Labour MP Paul Flynn and he's 
in our Cardiff studio, and we're joined on the phone by the Conservative 
MP Julian Brazier, sorry we didn't have time to get you into a studio Mr 
Brazier, but are you one of those, I'm tempted to say, rare breed of Tories 
who seem, who support Ann Widdecombe down the line on this? 

JULIAN BRAZIER MP:            Well John, I don't support this 
particular measure very enthusiastically but I do support the principle 
that something has to be done. Yesterday morning I had at my constituency 
surgery a frightened family with two young children.  The house next door 
to them has a tenant who shares it with seven or eight others all of whom 
take drugs, mostly cannabis, but from time to time they throw their needles 
over the fence, and people from leafy suburbs can raise their noses at 
Ann, but they have to say what are their answers to the problems?  

HUMPHYRS:                    Well she's offered one 
hasn't she and that's to say, let's effectively, let's criminalise anybody 
who uses a bit of pot or something, but you are saying that you don't go 
that far? 

BRAZIER:                    Well it is of course already 
criminal, what she was proposing was a minimum of a hundred pound fine 
and no more cautions.  That's an idea which she suggested we trail and 
by all means let's trial it. It may be that a different approach is needed 
but the present situation in which the drug culture which starts with soft 
drugs is taking over parts of our inner cities needs to be tackled and 
that's why so few Labour MPs are willing... because they represent most 
of the inner city seats, are willing to speak out in favour of liberalising 
cannabis.  

HUMPHRYS:                    Well Paul Flynn, you 
are one of those who does. Are you a bit surprised, as  think many people 
are by the lack of support, or outspoken support at any rate, for Ann Widdecombe. 


PAUL FLYNN:                No, I think the public opinion 
has moved on and I believe the taboo has now been broken. The first two 
Tory MPs who spoke out in this way a couple of years ago had their mouths 
bandaged by the whips and they weren't allowed to mention the subject again. 
But now we've got more truth, more honesty and I believe they are going 
to have a fair debate. The problem that Julian refers to is the present 
situation and I am against what is happening now but it's the result of 
Britain having the so-called toughest policies in Europe. We jail more 
people, we punish them more severely than anywhere else, that why we've 
got the problems that we have now. And I've written to Tony Blair and said 
Tony, when we go to the country, we'll have a great deal to boast about 
but one thing we will be ashamed of, is that when we leave office, like 
every other government since the war, there will be more deaths from drugs 
in Britain, than there were when we came into office. And I want to make 
this charge as serious as I can, I believe that the result of the ignorance, 
the prejudice, the cowardice of British politicians, because of that people 
are dying. And in the next ten years I believe there will be at least a 
thousand avoidable deaths in Britain from heroin because the British politicians 
have refused to see that the argument that prohibition is the problem, 
it hasn't be recognised. That's happened in Holland.  In Holland they decriminalised 
cannabis, soft drugs, twenty years ago. The result is that there's less 
use of soft drugs there and they are often used in a safer way than they 
are here. But the dramatic success of that is that they have separated 
the two markets and the hard drug deaths are a tenth of what they are here.
                        
                              Forty people per 
million die in Britain from heroin use, it's less than four and we've got 
to realise that what we are doing at the moment, is throwing the majority 
of our young people into a market of soft drugs that's run by criminals, 
people who are totally irresponsible. The best way to solve the problem 
is to collapse that market by replacing it by a market that can be legalised, 
licensed, policed, controlled, that will reduce all drug use. 

HUMPHRYS:                    But there is a big difference 
isn't there, between what you have just talked about and between turning 
a blind eye as we are at the moment. 

FLYNN:                    Well yes, we've got decriminalisation 
on a completely irrational scale...

HUMPHRYS:                    But the point I'm making 
though is that you are not actually winning the argument are you because 
what you are talking about is something much more liberal. 

FLYNN:                    But the Daily Telegraph 
of all papers, where seventy-six per cent of their readers are saying they 
disagree with Ann Widdecombe, but the public are far in advance of opinion 
than the politicians are and I believe that now we can say in parliament, 
for goodness sake, the majority of politicians have probably used cannabis 
at one time, it wasn't any great thing, it's nothing like as dangerous 
as alcohol or tobacco or maybe medicinal drugs, why do we allow this black 
market to continue to poison and corrupt our young people. Decriminalisation 
will reduce drug use.

HUMPHRYS:                    Julian Brazier, isn't 
that a fair point?

BRAZIER:                    I don't really share Paul's 
view of the picture in Holland. I mean the French perspective, as was reported 
a couple of years ago rather widely in the papers of Holland, is that under 
the Shenngin  arrangement they've got real problems with drugs now coming 
across the border from Holland.  The central issue really is this: Is the 
best way to tackle the hard drugs culture to liberalise soft drugs as Paul 
proposes or is it to find another way to try and persuade people not to 
get involved in drugs at all? 

HUMPHRYS:                    What's the other way, 
that's the trick isn't it. I mean what is the other way?

BRAZIER:                    Well I think we should 
have much more in the way of programmes in schools, I also think...

HUMPHRYS:                    ..tried it...

BRAZIER:                    ...I also think though, 
we have to look at ways of breaking up the culture in the inner cities. 
I mean I have advocated in the past looking at housing policy. In some 
states in America if you are convicted of a drug offence, certainly if 
you are convicted more than one of a drug offence you can get evicted from 
your house. That would provide a real disincentive of the kind of people 
who are ruining the lives of many young families and elderly people in 
the middle of my constituency. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Isn't - Paul Flynn, isn't 
this the thing that you have not tried everything yet, at least this is 
the argument, you haven't tried everything yet, try and few more things 
before you...

FLYNN:                    Everything that Julian has 
suggested has been tried for forty years in America.  They have drug education, 
they bombed and defoliated the drugs fields, they even put drug offenders 
into prison for longer terms than murderers in some states in America, 
but nothing has worked. Prohibition is the problem and prohibition like 
the prohibition of alcohol, builds up an empire of crime and allows the 
customers of prohibition which is the majority of young people to be exploited. 
 On the question of Europe, I spent a large part of last year as the rapporteur 
for the Health Committee of the Council of Europe making a comparison between 
drug outcomes in the forty countries in the Council of Europe and the result 
of that is Britain is the worst - can we get this through - will Julian 
see himself as a British politician as responsible for the terrible number 
of deaths we have here. The Dutch government have just had a debate in 
which they have voted to strengthen their decriminalisation policies there, 
they want more decriminalisation there because the evidence is there, incontrovertible, 
that cannabis use goes down if you decriminalise it, you take away the 
attraction of forbidden fruit, you take away the attraction of illegality, 
young people don't use it in the same way but it means that young people 
can have their experiments with soft drugs without being pressurised by 
people in the illegal hard market and they don't become addicted to drugs. 
The evidence is overwhelming. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Okay, Mr Brazier, it 
does seem, doesn't it, can I just ask you this point, we don't have too 
long, he - Paul Flynn - seems to be winning this argument doesn't he, even 
with your own Shadow Cabinet. I mean you saw what we saw this morning in 
the newspapers.

BRAZIER:                    Well I'd only say this, 
as far as I know there's nobody in the Shadow Cabinet who wants to decriminalise 
drugs. To return to the America point, a generation ago America's inner 
cities were by far the worst in the world, the crime rate in some small 
American cities was more than entire countries in Europe.  With the kinds 
of approaches they have adopted now, their crime rates have dropped in 
many parts of America and in some parts are lower than many categories 
than in many European countries. Holland isn't a country that I would offer 
as an example in a whole string of different ways and the problems that 
their neighbours are having with the liberalisation in Holland indicates 
that, What I am the first to say that we've got to recognise our approach 
to drugs in the past hasn't worked but I do think we should look at some 
of the experiments in  America where whole states have made very substantial 
progress in coping with this. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Thanks very much.  Paul 
Flynn, should the cabinet now do the same as a large chunk of the shadow 
cabinet has done this morning and tell us whether they have tried pot or 
not?  

FLYNN:                    I wish they would. We know 
that Alan Duncan as advocated the legalisation of all drugs.  We know that 
David Prior has advocated the decriminalisation of cannabis and said that 
he has used it. All we want is for politicians to do something that they 
rarely do - tell the plain honest truth and let's have a proper debate. 


HUMPHRYS:                    Paul Flynn, Julian Brazier, 
thank you both very much indeed.