Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1100
- 1119)
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2002
MR DAVID
RAYNES, MR
FRED BROUGHTON,
OBE, MRS MARY
BRETT AND
BARONESS GREENFIELD,
CBE
Mr Cameron
1100. I suppose, Chairman, the equivalent would
be a packet of cigarettes which has the tar and the nicotine levels
on the side. Is that not what the proponents of legalisation who
say it should be sold through off licences, is that not what they
are saying?
(Mrs Brett) If you are going to declassify or down-classify
cannabis, then it is not going to be legal, if this is what we
are talking about still, it is not going to be legal anyway, so—
Chairman
1101. I am sorry, I am talking about legalisation
here, not declassification. That is a different argument. I am
saying the case for legalising is that you can then regulate the
trade, whereas you were saying just a moment ago that kids do
not know what they are buying, that the quality and strength varies
dramatically.
(Mrs Brett) Yes, I think Mr Raynes probably can answer
this.
(Mr Raynes) If you legalised and regulated the trade,
actually that would be an incentive for stronger plants of cannabis
to come on to the market, would it not? More than 20 per cent
of the UK cigarette and tobacco market is controlled by gangsters.
What you need to do, sir, is to read the comments on the Internet
about cannabis by people who talk about it all the time and if
you get into their heads and understand how they think about it,
they talk about the strong varieties of cannabis and they talk
about being out of it for hours and hours and hours. A regulated
trade, it is a proposal, we are not going to have it, are we,
but if we had a regulated trade, you would have people supplying
something stronger and there would be a market for that, there
is a market for that.
1102. But you would make it legal on the grounds
that it was harmful, or else you might not make it legal and you
might just explain that this is the effect it has on you and allow
them to hold their own card hand, as some other witnesses have
said.
(Mr Raynes) I think the evidence in the Netherlands
where they have taken a very tolerant attitude to cannabis is
that netherweed, or nederwent, is probably the strongest cannabis
on the planet and, as Mary Brett said, they have selectively bred
cannabis and it is extremely strong and very dangerous.
1103. But if you explained the effects and made
it legally available and said that you cannot drive, for example,
and you will be prosecuted if you do, would that not be a way
of getting some sort of grip on a trade on which we appear to
have no grip at all?
(Mr Raynes) My whole lifetime has been trying to get
a grip on the trade and so many times it has been cannabis and
sometimes it has been tobacco and alcohol. We have not got a grip
on the tobacco market and we cannot, so what you are proposing
to me—
1104. Well, we have more of a grip on the tobacco
market and indeed there is some on the alcohol market too.
(Mr Raynes) We have a little bit more on the alcohol
market because it is more open, but on the tobacco market 20 per
cent at least is controlled by the mafia.
1105. But if 80 per cent is sold through regulated
outlets, presumably regulation works for that 80 per cent, does
it not?
(Mr Raynes) Well, it does not, does it, because we
know that kids smoke cigarettes and we try to control kids getting
cigarettes, so it does not work. We have attempted down the road
to regulation, but regulation just would not work in this market.
(Baroness Greenfield) I would just question the logic
there that it should be legal so that we can regulate it because
if that was the only reason, then surely that argument should
also apply to heroin, ecstasy, LSD and so forth.
1106. I think that those who make that argument
do indeed apply it to that and, as Mr Broughton was saying a moment
ago, there is a very good case in relation to heroin.
(Baroness Greenfield) I think it should be seen that
if that is the argument, it should be apply to the whole of the
drugs spectrum.
1107. I think that those who make that argument
do intend that. The one dodgy area, if I may call it that, is
crack cocaine where everyone knows that people's behaviour becomes
unpredictable and often very violent.
(Mr Broughton) There is more than one dodgy area because
as soon as you think you understand the drugs culture—
1108. Perhaps I should say "the most dodgy".
(Mr Broughton) As soon as you think you understand
the drugs culture on the streets, you have missed it, you are
old-fashioned because it moves at a fast pace and drugs are moving
quickly on the street in terms of fashion and culture. If you
are thinking about legalising and regulating, then quickly there
will be drugs on the streets which are outside of that regulation
and the first question you asked about legalising or regulating
or whatever was whether this is a good idea and I think whether
it is a good idea or not is the first barrier. I do not hear the
Dutch and those of us who are interested in this subject and go
over to Holland and try to understand what is going on there,
and I have been in drug squad offices and spoken to the practitioners
there, I am not hearing that cannabis in terms of state supply
is a regulated business. I do not know whether that might be a
new idea over there, but I am not hearing Holland moving into
some form of standards in relation to cannabis, some official
standards.
1109. Well, it would not be such a dramatic
step forward from where we are with, say, cigarettes, would it?
(Mr Broughton) I think it would be probably quite
a dramatic step. To start to legalise and regulate a whole range
of drugs and not consider what the social implications of that
are is a step too far at this stage.
Chairman: Yes, but that is what we are trying
to do, to think of the social implications.
Mr Cameron
1110. I have just one last question on the Dutch
experiences. We have had very conflicting evidence about the Dutch
experience. One group of witnesses said to us, from memory, that
when they first went into the café experiment, drug use
did increase, particularly cannabis use, but they now claim that
cannabis use in Holland is lower than in the United Kingdom and
actually the average age of a heroin user in Holland is getting
older, whereas in the United Kingdom it is getting lower. Is that
your experience—perhaps this is one for Mrs Brett and Mr
Raynes—or do you think that is wrong?
(Mrs Brett) I do not have very up-to-date figures
for the use of cannabis in Holland for teenagers. I have the figures
for the AMCDDA, that is the European Monitoring Council, for 2000.
They are, ecstasy use amongst 15 to 16 year olds was 8.1, United
Kingdom was 3.0; cocaine 4.3, United Kingdom 1.5; heroin, 1.3,
United Kingdom 0.7. This is lifetime prevalence of 15 to 16 year
olds. Somebody said a while ago separating the cannabis from the
hard drugs scene in Holland, it does not work. Their use of harder
drugs at a younger age is much higher than ours.
Mr Cameron: We have been given evidence to say
the opposite.
Angela Watkinson
1111. Could I ask Mr Broughton, if he agrees
that the main plank of government policy should be preventative
education to prevent the next generation of drug addicts being
formed? Do you agree that however good and well informed preventative
education is, in schools and outside, it can never work without
the back up of sanctions in law?
(Mr Broughton) Yes, I do agree with that. What is
good about the United Kingdom Drugs Policy, and it is always worth
re-reading it, is that I thought the main plank of the policy
was in relation to enforcement connected to sanctions and punishment,
connected to treatment and the way that the three planks operate
in terms of coordination, investment and all of those things.
I was just talking, before I came here, about somebody who is
under the influence of crack cocaine and was arrested in a London
police station last night, who might be involved in some criminal
activity as well and might be vulnerable in terms of their medical
condition, there is no easy place, no drug rehabilitation centre,
there is no treatment in relation to their own safety. One of
the things I thought we were promised in the United Kingdom Drugs
Policy was this relationship between enforcement and punishment
and treatment and the way you can divert people within the system,
the courts can have some flexibility in relation to sanctions,
send people to rehabilitation and get some coordination going.
That is where I think there has been a failure, that is a failure
of proper coordination and it may be a failure in investment.
I agree with what you are saying.
David Winnick
1112. Professor Greenfield if one accepts, as
I do, as I said previously, the harm all drugs do, including cannabis,
coming back to the argument regarding cigarettes and alcohol,
the evidence seems to show that more harm is done by excessive
alcohol abuse and smoking, and we know that by the terrible diseases,
certainly lung cancer, which result from smoking. What do you
say to the argument that if smoking and alcohol remains legalised,
and no one has suggested otherwise, why not bring drugs into the
same category and at the same time constantly warning people of
the effect there would be of taking drugs?
(Baroness Greenfield) If we unpack that. To differentiate
cigarettes from alcohol, which I think is important to do, let
us take cigarettes first, I would challenge the evidence that
cigarettes are more harmful than cannabis, because there is a
lot of evidence that the lack of filters, and so on, on cigarettes
and the increased heat and carcinogenic they contain are more
pernicious than in cannabis.
1113. You do not deny it causes tremendous health
problems?
(Baroness Greenfield) Of course it does. As an aside,
it is very interesting that not one paper is published on the
badness of GM foods and yet people are legislating against, that
even though there are proven substances here that are dangerous
for you and people are trying to embrace them.
1114. Chairman: I think we will stay out of
GM food.
(Baroness Greenfield) If we then turn to alcohol.
Alcohol in excess, as with cigarettes, is undeniably bad for you
but the amounts that you have to take comparable with cannabis
do suggest—we know it is the case they work in very different
ways—that with cannabis you have to take, as it were, a
fraction of a milligram to have an effect where as you are into
four figures of milligrams with alcohol. We know that alcohol
works in a very generalised, non-specific way in the brain compared
to cannabis, which works on very specific molecular targets and
acts as an imposter, as do other drugs, for naturally occurring
agents. If one sets aside the acute effects, the immediate feeling
of dreaminess or happiness, it could mean that in the long term
cannabis has a much more destructive and powerful effect on the
configurations of your brain cells than, let us say, alcohol.
I am not in any way condoning the excessive use of alcohol but
in speaking with people who see drug abusers everyday the social
use of alcohol, that is two to three units for a woman and three
to four units for a man, is not comparable with social smoking.
I think that is a very slippery slope if people equate the two.
David Winnick: Yes. Thank you.
Bridget Prentice
1115. I just want, in a sense, to go back slightly
to the discussion about the effect of decriminalisation. A number
of you have said very strongly that decriminalisation would inevitably
increase use, "it always does", that was Mrs Brett's
quote. The NDPA said, "it would increase and encourage it,
as evidence from other countries show" and the Police Federation
say something similar. Two things, one is, what evidence do you
have that decriminalisation would actually increase prevalence?
Secondly, particularly, what evidence do you have about other
countries? I know Mrs Brett gave us some quotes about the year
2000, I would like some expansion on that.
(Mrs Brett) I have evidence of increase prevalence
in Holland when it was decriminalised. I have evidence from Alaska,
which I know some people have quoted before. The Alaskan experiment
lasted 10 or 15 years and they did a survey at one point and use
amongst the youth of Alaska was 45 per cent, sorry if I get these
slightly wrong, they are about that region. General use in the
States was about 17 per cent. I have charts at home, again from
South Australia, where they decriminalised in certain states and
they compared then the usage with young people in other states
in Australia and it was either two or three times the usage in
the state that had been decriminalised. There is plenty of evidence
round that it increases use.
1116. Does that not level off as they get older?
We have some people saying there would be an increase in the use
of cannabis if it was decriminalised, but as people get older
they move on to other things.
(Mrs Brett) In Holland they started their decriminalisation
about 1978, I think that was the exact date, and there are figures
from 1984 to 1988 that the use of cannabis doubled amongst young
people. That is the only figure I have in my head, which I can
quote you off the top of my head. There must be figures in other
states.
(Mr Raynes) The real problem is there is always a
new generation coming along ready to be influenced. My conviction
after a lifetime in enforcement is that prevention is the method
because we have to stop this cycle, which is like a snowball rolling
down the slope, and the only way to stop it is not by enforcement.
Fred Broughton's organisation and mine cannot stop it, we cannot
leave it to enforcement, it has to be prevention and education
and the right kind of prevention and education.
1117. Did you not say earlier that there was
beginning to be a drop in young people taking up cigarette smoking?
(Mr Raynes) I did not say that. I am very concerned
about young people, particularly girls in my observation, smoking.
I cannot understand why it is that girls are smoking more than
boys, except that less girls take part in sport. Physical health
has a lot to do with whether one takes substances.
1118. That is an interesting debate we cannot
have at the moment.
(Mr Broughton) Can I briefly make a contribution,
it was a blinding flash of honesty from an Australian police officer,
a colleague, we were discussing international crime and drugs
and we were getting into this debate in quite a heavy way and,
in a way, trying to understand what options might be available.
He came up with, as Australians do, "you know why they are
doing this, it is because they think it is fun". Young people
that smoke cannabis and taking ecstasy are not doing it to harm
themselves they are doing it because they think it is great fun
and they enjoy it. You have to understand that. They are not concerned
about whether they are self-harming, they are not concerned whether
or not it might effect their education or the social fabric of
their relationship, they think it is great fun. You have to understand
that is what is going on. People are not smoking cannabis and
taking ecstasy because it is painful or uncomfortable they are
taking it because they think it is fun.
1119. That is why, I put it to you again, is
it not the case that it is fun when you are 16 but by the time
you are 36 you have grown out of it, you have become a responsible
adult, you have family commitments, whatever?
(Mr Broughton) 36 year olds are snorting cocaine in
London, that is what the 36 year old are doing, there is growing
evidence of that.
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