Parliament: The Sketch - Cunningham takes spaced-out trip down Fantasy Lane

IN HIS statement on the launch of the First Drugs Annual Report, Jack Cunningham proudly announced that "for the first time" local and national agencies would be working towards "joint performance targets". What a good idea, I thought - it's high time the consumer in this most unregulated of markets had some protection and a "joint performance target" seemed a good place to start. Just as tobacco companies are obliged to display tar levels on cigarette packs, dope dealers would be required to offer their customers some guidance as to how quickly their products would achieve the desired end. And if the customer felt that "it'll have you giggling uncontrollably within five minutes" was a misleading description of what turned out to be a stock cube, they would be able to apply to their trading standards office for redress.

This wasn't what Dr Cunningham had in mind, naturally. For New Labour, cannabis is no giggling matter, only another front in the implacable war against drugs. And the parliamentary discussion of his vacuous statement seemed to demonstrate, in political terms at least, that drugs really do damage the mental faculties. Dr Cunningham claimed that the report published yesterday "describes progress during the first year of the strategy". I haven't read the drug czar's original document, so it may contain a long list of things achieved over the past 12 months. If so, it seems odd Mr Cunningham chose not to mention any of them in Parliament, preferring to concentrate on the speculative victories of the next 10 years. "In seeking to limit availability , our aim is to reduce access to all drugs amongst young people significantly, and to reduce access to the drugs which cause the greatest harm, particularly heroin and cocaine, by 25 per cent by 2005 and by 50 per cent by 2008".

How neat and impressive those figures are, and how consoling - in the complete absence of any current success - to be able to look forward to better times. There is another way of stating the last "initiative", of course - if such a term can really be applied to such bankruptcy of invention - and it would run something like this: "Our aim is to maintain the street price of heroin and cocaine and by doing so to encourage more criminals to move into this exceptionally profitable service industry". At least this policy stands some chance of success. As several MPs reminded Dr Cunningham, and as he himself confirmed, the concerted efforts of police and Customs officers over the past 10 years have resulted in cheaper, purer, more readily available heroin. Those are facts, though, and he was happier in the trippy realms of possibility - "By 2002", he concluded, "we plan to increase by one third the amount of assets seized from drug traffickers." How exactly do you plan a wish, and a wish so wishful at that?

I thought briefly that the Opposition might rip into this apology for a policy but I had reckoned without the stupefying effect of drug panic. Anne Winterton's only concern seemed to be that his hysteria had not been shrill enough. Would he confirm, she asked, that "taking any illegal substance is plainly wrong, addictive and harmful". Yes, he would. So anxious was Dr Cunningham not to be depicted as soft on drugs that he would probably have confirmed that cannabis turns people into hamsters if he'd been asked to. Only Paul Flynn raised a lone voice of sanity, suggesting it might be constructive to distinguish more clearly between soft and hard drugs and ending with a plea for the Government to "look with a fresh mind" at the issue.

He stood no chance. Oh yes, it sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? But soon you want a bigger buzz and before you know it you're mainlining Honesty and Common sense. Dr Cunningham just said no.