Professor Alex Stevens:

The Deputy mentioned vaping, which is a really interesting example. It is a controversial question as to whether those young people are being encouraged to take up nicotine, or just that those are the young people who would be smoking tobacco but instead are vaping now, which is probably is safer. There is this issue of regulation lagging behind trends in the market and so vaping has occurred and entered the market in many countries in advance of politicians and regulators putting in place adequate safeguards and then regulators having to catch up. That is certainly what has been going on in the UK. We can learn from that the lesson that it is best if politicians and regulators get ahead of the game and develop the models they want to see in place and how they are going to put limitations in place in advance of these legal markets developing. That is something I encourage members to think about, namely, preparing for the future of the drug market, rather than reacting to the last drug war.

With regard to impairment, we know there is widespread use of alcohol in society. You would not want people to be in charge of heavy plant or diagnosing a medical complaint if they were drunk. We can learn from the regulations already in place for impairing substances that are intoxicating. That is not something we are not familiar with.