Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 14 March 2017.
Leader of the house, Andrew Atkinson, who is the chair of the Wrexham town centre forum steering group, has identified that everyone seems to be blaming everyone else, rather than actually getting to grips with the problem. I heard from a sedentary position on the other side, from the Welsh nationalists, that they believe that legalising drugs is a sensible alternative here. From this side of the house, we definitely do not believe that legalising drugs is part of the solution. And, in particular, when you see that the deaths from drugs have doubled since 2012, and 114,000 died last year, that clearly is not a road to solving this problem. What you as the Welsh Government—[Interruption.] There’s lots of mumbling coming from the other side of the house. [Interruption.] From the Government here in Cardiff, there clearly does need now to be a working group set up by the Welsh Government to pull together the charities, the health bodies and the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales to make sure that we can get a co-ordinated approach to dealing with this issue, especially in Wrexham, where there does seem to be a blame culture developing, rather than the ability to get to grips with the very serious issue that many of these people are facing, and the tragedy that their lives have spiralled out of control. Ultimately, they need the support of Government working with sponsored bodies to put the measures in place. Can I confirm that you will do that?