A COUNCILLOR has denied claiming cocaine should be sold over the counter in the city in a row over drug decriminalisation.

Green city councillor Marjory Bisset was accused of making the bold claim in a debate by Tory council leader Marc Bayliss in response to discussions over government plans to decriminalise some illegal substances.

Cllr Bayliss reacted furiously to the “outrageous” suggestion – after Cllr Bisset quoted from Ben Elton’s novel High Society.

The passage from the book made reference to the murder of a police officer by a drug dealer which, it is claimed, would have been avoided if cocaine was made available over the counter in off licences.

“If those people were able to get their cocaine at the off-licence – properly licensed, taxed, and restricted to adults – then the man who killed that officer would have to find some other means of making a living and there would be one less police widow,” the quote said.

Cllr Bisset told councillors that they did not have a “heart or the power of logical thought” if the extract did not move them into reconsidering their views on drugs.

But Cllr Bayliss said allowing drugs to be decriminalised would be a “terrible retrograde step” and “reckless move” for the city.

“I have heard very few more dangerous proposals in my time in politics,” he said.

Cllr Bisset, who represents the city’s St Stephen ward, defended the Green Party’s policies on drug decriminalisation but denied saying cocaine and other drugs should be sold over the counter, calling the city council leader’s accusations “over the top.”

The city council leader hit out at Cllr Bisset’s speech and the Green Party for its “dangerous, ill-informed and wrong-headed” views around drug legalisation.

“[Decriminalisation] is a terrible idea. Hard drugs wreck lives, we can talk about it in the abstract but anyone that knows anyone that has been addicted to these sorts of things knows how dangerous and wrong [the Green Party] are,” he said.

“I want to get drugs out of our city not liberalise them and allow them here.”

“This is not a rogue member,” he added. “This is their policy… It is wrong nationally. And they actually see a role for the council in handing out licences for hard drugs. This is crazy, left-wing politics.”

“Simply, my view is that there would be less harm to users and the rest of us if the possession of drugs was not a crime,” Cllr Bisset said after the meeting.

“The provision of drugs would have to be regulated. The same with alcohol and cigarettes. Drugs would need to be regulated to. My thoughts are really that you would need a prescription from the doctor for cocaine. You couldn’t just go into a shop and any old person can buy it.

“The criminalisation of drugs, the possession and sale of drugs, causes so much crime and violence and so much suffering. Drug mules, killings, gang warfare and actual addicts mugging people, the misery and pain it causes is vast and I think it would be much less if we had a regime such as the one that I’ve described.”

Cllr Bisset had pointed to Portugal, which decriminalised the possession of all drugs for personal use in 2001, as an example to follow.

During the full council meeting, Cllr Bisset said the motion by Conservative councillor Steve Mackay was tailored to attack the Green Party in the upcoming local elections with St John’s Labour councillor Chris Cawthorne querying whether the response would be immediately printed on the Conservative’s election leaflets.

The meeting took place on Tuesday night (March 30).