Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-239)
PROFESSOR SIR
MICHAEL RAWLINS
AND PROFESSOR
DAVID NUTT
1 MARCH 2006
Q220 Mr Flello: There was no undue
influence?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
I do not think so, apart from the chairman.
Q221 Chairman: What discussions have
you had, if any, with the research councils to encourage them
to look for the application of resources to research projects
to support your work? Does that discussion take place?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
No. That is probably remiss of us and I think we probably should
and try to ensure that there are some formal channels of communication
between the ACMD, the MRC and the ESRC.
Q222 Dr Iddon: Psilocin and psilocybin,
which are the psychoactive constituents of magic mushrooms, have
been class A for a long time. You said drugs are in classes according
to the harm they either cause to individuals or to society as
a whole. I do not see psilocin or psilocybin being sold in the
shops, synthesised by many people and for sale on the streets.
How on earth did those two compounds get into class A?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
Psilocin and the esters were originally class A right from the
beginning of the Medicines Act. Magic mushrooms were in class
A right at the very beginning, before the ACMD had been formed.
Psilocin is a hallucinogenic compound with properties similar
to LSD. At the time the Misuse of Drugs Act went through Parliament
it was class A, but only for products of mushrooms, dried mushroom
extract. The issue about fresh mushrooms was very unclear in law.
Q223 Dr Iddon: I want to know what
the evidence was that psilocin and psilocybin should be classed
as A. I have never known anybody use them.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
I have no idea what was going through the minds of the group who
put it in class A in 1970 and 1971.
Q224 Dr Iddon: It is there because
it is there?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
It is there because it is there. However, since that time there
have been very few publications on psilocin. It has hardly been
investigated at all. It was looked at in the 1950s and 1960s at
the time of Aldous Huxley, mescaline, LSD and those sorts of things.
Since that time, there has been virtually no work done on it at
all.
Q225 Dr Iddon: Could I suggest that
there should be and that they are in the wrong classification
because they are not causing great harm to any individuals I have
ever known and certainly not to society at large.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
There is no doubt that people do still take magic mushrooms.
Q226 Dr Iddon: I am not talking about
magic mushrooms; I am talking about psilocin and psilocybin as
chemicals. I suggest that it was because psilocin and psilocybin
were already there that magic mushrooms were completely put into
the wrong classification, either by yourselves or by the government,
because the two compounds were already contained in class A with
no evidence for them to be there.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
The evidence that psilocin is a hallucinogen is very strong. There
is no doubt about that and no argument about it. The evidence
upon which one should change now is non-existent because there
has been very little work done on it. To leave fresh magic mushrooms
available when all the other forms of mushrooms were class A is
causing grave difficulties. Although you may think that psilocin
is pretty harmless, as a physician sometimes I get kids who have
been eating fresh magic mushrooms grown on the Newcastle town
moor, accidentally apparently.
Q227 Dr Iddon: Arsenic is very dangerous;
so are a lot of other chemicals but they are not being widely
used and neither are psilocin and psilocybin. What evidence was
there to put magic mushrooms in class A?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
Magic mushrooms were being sold in farm shops and so on by the
kilo. Very considerable quantities of magic mushrooms were being
sold two or three years ago, fresh, which escaped the law. They
do have an hallucinogenic effect. There is no question about it.
Q228 Dr Iddon: How many deaths have
there been due to taking magic mushrooms?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
I do not know.
Q229 Dr Iddon: The figure I have
seen is one.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
I do not know.
Q230 Chairman: We have had some research
done for the Committee as a background piece of work by RAND.
You have had a copy of it and that report made clear that the
government's decision about class A was not based on scientific
evidence, that the evidence on mushrooms is small with very little
research on their effects and the positioning of them in class
A does not seem to reflect any scientific evidence that they are
of equivalent harm to other class A drugs. Do you not think that
brings into question the system that we have for classification,
full stop?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
One has to be very careful about the issue of things like hallucinogens.
They can cause serious problems. There is no benefit to anybody
by taking hallucinogens in a medical sense. It is all down side.
If one is operating something approaching a precautionary principle—and
I hope you will not ask me to define it in the way you asked Sir
David King to—it is frankly unwise to encourage in any way
the use of this hallucinogen. It may be better in B rather than
A. The trouble is that the evidence now is so old. It all dates
back to the 1960s and there was not very much evidence then, but
one does know anecdotally, if nothing more, that they are hallucinogenic.
I have had kids in my ward who have needed antipsychotic drugs
for 12 months.
Q231 Dr Iddon: Your committee was
consulted by the government and asked to review magic mushrooms.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
It was slightly different. The government asked us about it but
they did not have to because it was going into primary legislation
in the last Drugs Bill.
Q232 Dr Iddon: I was on the Standing
Committee for that Bill, the 2005 Drugs Act, and I had the impression
that the whole thing was rushed through. My feeling was that the
whole business was rushed through in 2005 because the election
was coming and the Bill had to be on the statute book but, more
importantly, because there were two court cases outstanding where
the government were trying to prosecute shopkeepers for selling
fresh mushrooms on the basis that they were not fresh mushrooms;
they had been frozen in freezers and that fell into the law. It
was illegal to prepare mushrooms in any way and the government
was trying to prove that by freezing the mushrooms that was a
kind of preparation of fresh magic mushrooms. I contested that
when I was on the Standing Committee and I did not think it should
have gone through the Standing Committee, frankly, because of
those two very loose court cases that the government was in danger
of losing. Have you or has the government ever classified a drug
on grounds of clarification of the law, because that is what happened
in my opinion.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
I cannot answer that question. I do not know what has happened
over the last 35 years but since I have been on the ACMD I do
not think it has happened. I cannot recall another case.
Q233 Mr Devine: Do you support the
fact that amphetamines are classified as class A or B depending
upon the method of preparation?
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
It is really the method of administration.
Professor Nutt: I do, because
there is undoubtedly much greater harm from amphetamines given
intravenously than amphetamines taken orally.
Q234 Mr Devine: It is not the method
of preparation?
Professor Nutt: The method of
administration clearly determines the risk to the individual and
to society.
Q235 Mr Devine: If the form of the
drug can affect its status in this case, why is there no distinction
made between, for example, cocaine prepared for snorting and coca
leaves prepared for chewing?
Professor Nutt: That is a very
good question.
Q236 Mr Devine: Is there any answer?
Professor Nutt: We are not as
sophisticated with cocaine in terms of the law as we are with
amphetamines.
Q237 Bob Spink: In the answer you
have just given to Mr Devine about the way in which the drug is
administered, you said intravenous is much more serious than taking
it orally and yet methylamphetamine in its pure, crystal form
can be smoked. In that circumstance, it is extremely dangerous
because it is very highly addictive, like crack cocaine, and it
has a massive psychotic impact on the individual and causes great
harm in various societies like Thailand and the USA. Why should
that particular drug be classified as a B rather than an A?
Professor Nutt: That is an extremely
good point. There is no doubt that methylamphetamine, because
it can be smoked, is more dangerous than traditional dexedrine
(amphetamine sulphate). When we reviewed the whole issue of methylamphetamine,
we clearly accepted that it was more dangerous than amphetamine
sulphate. The issue is would you minimise risk to society by moving
it into class A. The reason I believe we did not recommend it
at the time was mostly because there could be a perverse effect.
If people saw methylamphetamine as a more dangerous drug, a more
class A amphetamine, we might well have begun to see importation.
There is a peculiar phenomenon in the UK at present which is that
we do not have very much methylamphetamine. That is based on a
couple of historical facts which relate to precursors and also
the preference of the population.
Bob Spink: Added to the dangers of the
drug, we have the availability of the drug, which is something
you said you take into account. This is changing in the UK, largely
driven by the internet, but the precursor chemicals like red phosphorous,
for instance, are increasingly available and people can make this
drug in their kitchen and are doing that now. Given that and given
the dangers, should we not take the precautionary principle and
reclassify this drug before it becomes a major societal problem,
as it has in other societies, in order to protect our children
and young people; or should we just wait until a lot of them suffer
from that and society gets a real pain in the butt on this and
then reclassify?
Q238 Mr Devine: We are very pleased
that you are not influenced by The Daily Mail, but I wonder
if you are influenced by The Metro, which describes the
drug as a dance and sex drug, more addictive than crack cocaine
and as fast becoming a global problem, the United Nations has
warned. It also makes reference in the article to sites being
set up in Europe and in England for the making of this drug.
Professor Nutt: There is no question
that methylamphetamine is a huge international problem. It has
caused devastation in Thailand. It has caused an enormous amount
of personal harm and social harm from the chemical factories in
the USA. We do not have a big problem. We looked very hard when
we did the methylamphetamine review to find evidence of its use
in the UK and there is not a great deal of use. It is a very fine
judgment as to whether moving it to class A because it is smokeable—and
I think we could do that—would reduce the chances of it
becoming popular in the UK or whether it would give a message
that it is a better quality product. It might get people who import
drugs to realise it would be extremely easy to import this from
Holland particularly. At the time the decision was made that it
was probably better to wait and see. With many drugs, these epidemics
have cycles. They are fashion driven and it may be that we would
get lucky and not get a wave of methylamphetamine here.
Q239 Bob Spink: Are you aware or
is there any evidence that this particular drug is used by a certain
sector of society—in particular, the homosexual groups—and
that this drug encourages and promotes risky sexual behaviour
which that particular section of society can least do with because
it causes the spread of diseases? Is this a concern?
Professor Nutt: It was a great
concern. If you read our report, which is a very systematic report,
that is a big concern. One of the targets for monitoring the possible
increasing use of methylamphetamine is to try to monitor clubs
which are frequented by the gay community because we think that
may well be the first sign of an upswing in use. If there was
a serious change in the usage or a trend upwards, we would have
to review the classification.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins:
The Council thought very long and hard about this and it was a
judgment at the end of the day as to which would be the least
damaging thing to do. When it took the decision to advise that
it should not move, it also made sure that there were measures
in place so that if there was any hint of a problem emerging we
could have a meeting—that is why the quorum of seven was
quite important—within hours to change our advice.
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