Ms Niamh Eastwood:

There are two aspects to that. First, if you want, as a politician, as a policymaker, to reduce the harms of the illicit market, regulation has to be one of the processes that reduce those harms. Otherwise, you will just keep playing whack-a-mole for the next 60 years. That is not going to happen and things will get more harmful, as we see currently with the synthetic opioids. These are political choices.

As regards the argument about an individual choosing to use drugs that come from a harmful market, the reality is that millions of people in all countries use drugs every day. We have seen previous attempted campaigns to shame drug users. It does not work. It has not deterred drug use. When you get down to individual responsibility, there are things we do all the time as individuals that may not be particularly responsible when it comes even to alcohol and its consumption, which will lead to health harms, in many cases much greater health harms than those associated with some illicit drugs. Again, these are policy levers. I would argue that, at the moment, many states have no control over markets. If your concern is the supply side, the fact that the majority of policing time and law enforcement time is spent focused on possession offences and low-level actors in the trade is doing nothing to impact those you describe as evil actors within this economy. It is about how we make sure the policy reduces harms, as I have said, but also, if these are your aims, how do you make sure those aims are achievable? At the minute, all the resources are going to those who are at the lowest end of the market, who are arguably the most deprived and the most exploited by the market.