Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat, is pushing for the “decriminalisation of all drugs in the UK,” following his claim last week that the “war on drugs has not worked.”

The controversial statement comes after the first major Commons debate last Thursday on the issue of drug classification and criminalisation in almost forty years. Cross-party alliances between the Liberal Democrats and Greens on the issue emerged as Caroline Lucas MP, a key supporter of the ‘Portuguese way’, also called for an overhaul of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.

The ‘Portuguese way’ refers to the fact that the use of illicit drugs was decriminalised in Portugal almost a decade ago and has seen a dramatic reduction in addiction rates, making Portugal’s amongt the lowest drug useage rates amongst EU member states.

Portugal stopped prosecuting drug users over ten years ago. Those caught in posession of drugs by the police on more than one occasion face a misdemeanour charge - the equivelent of a parking violation.

There were 2,000 drug-related deaths in England and Wales in 2013, whilst the number of deaths involving both legal and illegal drugs last year was at its highest level since 2001. Some MPs, such as Huppert, view this as an indication that current policy on drugs is not working, and may even be making the situation worse.

Huppert argues that we need to be “smart on drugs” and that “the idea is to reduce the number of users, rather than looking at the harms the substances cause.” He has called for people to realise that there are methods other than criminalisation to deal with the harms created in society by drugs.

While such an overhaul may help deal with the issue of chronic drug addiction, some argue that decriminalising drugs will only make drug use easier, and indeed encourage potential users such as students, to become involved with drugs.

When asked whether decriminalising drugs such as cannabis and MDMA might encourage students to use drugs more readily than they otherwise might, Huppert said that, regardless of the legal status of drugs, the reality is that “students will still have a spliff if they want,” and that studies show that the decriminalization of drugs does not lead to an increase in social use.