EXISTING legislation is adequate to address the threat of drink spiking and there are no immediate plans to create a new offence, according to the Home Affairs Minister.
Deputy Mary Le Hegarat said that the Violence Against Woman and Girls taskforce had identified a number of gaps in legislation but that spiking was not one of them.
Her comments in the States Assembly follow the suspected spiking of a young man who was left hospitalised last weekend.
Deputy Le Hegarat said: “I am reassured that existing legislation designed to address spiking is fit for purpose, and as such there is no need to develop a new offence to address this behaviour.
“There is currently no capacity to develop additional legislation to address spiking within the ongoing work to implement the recommendations of the Violence Against Women and Girls taskforce.”
She added that the government’s legislative programme in this area had been “defined” by the recommendations of the taskforce, which suggested strengthening legislation around domestic violence, online abuse, stalking and sexual harassment.
“The taskforce did not make any recommendations for additional legislation to address spiking… [Their] mapping exercise identified a number of gaps in legislation. However, the need to develop additional legislation to address spiking was not identified,” she said
During States questions, Deputy Le Hegarat accepted that Constable Karen Shenton-Stone was correct to state that the new Labour government had put creating a specific spiking offence on its political agenda and she said that it was not “off the agenda” in Jersey.
But she added: “My delivery plan is up to and including, obviously, the middle of 2026, and there is a strict, very tight plan at this time. As I said, it would be detrimental to be considering doing this as a separate offence. From that point of view, I’m concerned about what other things may have to be dropped, but it’s not off the agenda if things move forward.”
