Clegg calls for Home Office to be stripped of drugs policy

Under Liberal Democrat plans for a major reform of drugs policy cannabis could be available on the NHS under with doctors able to prescribe cannabis for medicinal reasons.

The deputy prime minister made the policy announcement alongside Sir Richard Branson as he declared “the war on drugs has failed to deliver any returns”.

Mr Clegg said the Lib Dems would seek in the next parliament the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use and ensure that those arrested with small amounts of illicit substances do not get a criminal record.

But he said Lib Dems would continue to apply severe penalties to those who manufactured, imported or dealt in illegal drugs, and clamp down on those who produced and sold unregulated chemical highs.

The job of tackling supply would remain with the Home Office, as a police issue.

Mr Clegg blamed the current failed strategy on “bone-headed prejudice flying in the face of all the evidence of what might be a better alternative”.

He said that people who used drugs should be seen as the “victims” of the dealers who sold illegal substances.

“The victims need to be treated with compassion, with treatment and all the best expertise that clinical excellence can deliver to wean them off their habit,” he said.

Announcing his plans at Chatham House alongside entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson - a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy - Mr Clegg said: “We believe the time for action on drugs reform is now.

“The UK and its partners must acknowledge that the ‘war on drugs’ hasn’t worked.

“Despite the decades of tough talking and billions of dollars spent in waging this war, the global drug problem and the criminal markets that underpin it remain all but untouched by our enforcement efforts.

“I’m incredibly frustrated that, after five years in coalition, we cannot take our work to its logical conclusion because the Tories are scared of being branded soft on drugs.

“It’s time for the Conservatives and Labour to realise voters expect politicians to deliver results based on solid evidence, not overblown rhetoric.”

He added: “We are letting the Mr Bigs, on their fancy yachts around the world, off the hook whilst we are spending millions of pounds putting behind bars people who have been caught with cannabis for personal use.”

Sir Richard compared the situation to prohibition-era USA, where “moonshine” alcohol was produced illegally.

If cannabis was legalised, he said, “instead of people just finding skunk on the street which is highly potent, they can go into a shop and get a mild kind of hashish which is not going to do them any harm and they have got a choice and they can make sure that the quality of the drugs are properly sorted out”.

He said: “If you leave it to the underworld to sell drugs to people - when prohibition happened in America with alcohol, moonshine became the fashionable thing. People would turn blind, it was the strongest alcohol people could get.

Sir Richard, who set up Virgin Records, added: “I have been in the music business. I have seen the misery that the current laws on drugs have caused artists, friends, brothers and sisters of friends, children and so on.”