Diolch. I move the Plaid Cymru amendments, but I want to use my contribution today to focus on amendment 4 in particular. 

Now, this debate is timely because just last week, the UK Government announced its intention to conduct a review into drugs policy, including treatment options. Unfortunately, they pre-decided not to consider the questions of decriminalisation or legalisation as part of that review. Now, I'm of the view that limiting their review in that way is short-sighted, and it may well exclude some potentially effective solutions.

Let's take a look at the picture in Portugal, where they've done the unthinkable. Portugal is seen as the trendsetter for switching from the war on drugs to a harm-reduction model, which started in 2001, and, as a result, we now have enough data to evaluate. It's not complete decriminalisation. It's no longer a criminal offence to possess drugs for personal use. It's still an administrative violation, punishable by penalties such as fines or community service. The specific penalty is decided by the commissions for the dissuasion of drug addiction, which are regional panels made up of legal, health and social work professionals. The vast majority of those referred to the commissions by the police have their cases suspended, effectively meaning that they receive no penalty. The commissions' aim is for people to enter treatment voluntarily; they don't attempt to force them to do so—that would be counter-productive.

The main aims of the policy were to tackle the severely worsening health of Portugal's drug-using population, in particular the people who inject drugs. In the years leading up to the reform, the number of drug-related deaths had soared, and rates of HIV, AIDS, TB and hepatitis B and C among people who inject drugs were rapidly increasing. There was a growing consensus among law enforcement and health officials that the criminalisation and marginalisation of people who use drugs was contributing to the problem and that a new, more humane legal framework could be better managed.

As well as decriminalisation, Portugal allocated greater resources across the drugs field, expanding and improving prevention, treatment, harm reduction and social reintegration programmes. The introduction of these measures coincided with an expansion of the Portuguese welfare state, which included a guaranteed minimum income. Therefore, it's likely that decriminalisation alone was not the sole reason for success—it was more likely to be as a result of a combination of policies across all departments, focusing on harm reduction and public health. The Portuguese experiment has been a huge success—levels of drug use are now below the European average; drug use has declined among those aged 15 to 24. Lifetime drug use among the general population has increased slightly, in line with trends in comparable countries. However, lifetime use is widely considered to be the least accurate measure of a country's current drug use situation. 

So, why would we not do this? And why would we not at least make a start on what can be done today? There's a clear public health reason for providing a safer environment for people to use drugs, such as safer injecting zones. These sites allow drug users to inject illicit drugs under the supervision of medical professionals who could intervene in cases of overdose. Providers on site would also be tasked with directing users towards treatment as well as ensuring clean needles and hygiene to prevent infection. This is something that we can do now, and it is something that will save lives. Now, I know the solutions that I've proposed here today will not be supported by everyone, but when we see an increase in problems faced by people who use illegal drugs unsafely, surely this is something we have to consider. 

I'll close my contribution this afternoon by sharing a memory, and it isn't a pleasant memory. During the mid 1990s I worked for the probation service, and, in one year, we lost more than a dozen young people to heroin in a small, local probation office. And I remember one particularly harrowing case, where a young woman who had come out of prison had her toddler cling to her body for a whole weekend when she had died. It was absolutely awful. Now that was before we had this Senedd. We have this institution now and surely it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that something like that doesn't happen again. We can, and so we should.