Sadiq Khan has been urged to call on the new Government to legally regulate drug-taking, amid a rising number of fatal overdoses from synthetic opiods across the UK.
Zoë Garbett, a Green member of the London Assembly, said the move would ensure that “the supply is taken out of the hands of criminals and instead put into those of health professionals”.
Similar calls have been made by organisations like the charity Release, which argues that “the use of criminal sanctions for drug possession offences creates more harm for individuals, their families and society”.
The mayor said that changing drug laws was not within his remit, and that he supports “the new Government’s mission to take back our streets and tackle these issues through enforcement, prevention and early intervention”.
It comes as concerns grow over the recent proliferation of nitazenes - a type of synthetic opioid - into the UK drugs supply. They are mostly mixed into heroin by organised gangs, but are far stronger than heroin.
In March, it was reported that more than 100 deaths have been linked to nitazenes since the summer of 2023, according to the National Crime Agency.
Niamh Eastwood, executive director at Release, said the trend had partly been caused by a ban on the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan, announced by the Taliban in April 2022.
“It led to a significant decrease in production,” Ms Eastwood said. “We thought it would take probably 18 months or so before we saw the impact of that, but in fact we saw the impact much earlier, as the prices increased as well, for heroin.”
The reduced supply and higher cost of importing heroin has meant that nitazenes are being used to compensate for the reduced purity.
“I’ve worked in this field for 20 years, and I’ve never been afraid of the market changing before,” Ms Eastwood said.
“We’ve had an incredibly robust market, with largely reliable levels of purity within heroin - so about 30 or 40 per cent, historically. There’s been peak and troughs… but this is the first time we’ve seen a market change.”
She added: “We’re going to see, we think - because it’s a new market - a shift to [active] demand for nitazenes, which is what happened with fentanyl in the US. So it’s no longer that fentanyl is contaminating the market - fentanyl is the market.”
Ms Garbett, who ran against Mr Khan in the recent mayoral election on a manifesto which promised a “harm reduction approach” to drugs, said Londoners have “not seen any improvement in the city’s drug policy” under his leadership.
“We can’t become complacent to drug harm and the horrific future London faces if we continue down this path of inaction,” she said.
“The only solution from our Government is to legally regulate drugs, so the supply is taken out of the hands of criminals and instead put into those of health professionals - and it would be transformational if the Mayor of London was calling for this.”
Supervised drug consumption centres - where people can go to take illegal drugs without being criminalised - already exist in many European cities. Glasgow will soon have the UK’s first such facility, funded by the Scottish Government.
Asked about the legalisation of drugs at Mayor’s Question Time last week, Mr Khan pointed to his London Drugs Commission, which is independently considering the effectiveness of the UK’s drugs laws - though only those which relate to cannabis specifically.
On the topic of synthetic opioids, his spokesman added: “Nothing is more important to the mayor than keeping Londoners safe.
“The rise in synthetic opioids in the capital is concerning and is impacting towns and cities across the UK. That’s why City Hall is working with health partners, Government and the police to coordinate a joined-up response to best deal with this growing issue.”
The Department for Health and Social Care was also approached for comment.
