Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
1-19)
PROFESSOR LES
IVERSEN
9 MARCH 2010
Chair: Can I refer everyone present to
the Register of Members' Interests? The Committee have given permission
for still photographs to be taken of this session as part of the
House magazine's review of the 30 years of select committees,
not that any of us has been in Parliament for 30 years, though
we may look as if we have—sorry; apart from Mr Winnick.
Mr Winnick, of course, was here when the first select committee
was born.
Mr Winnick: When the invasion
of Britain took place in 1066!
Q1 Chair: Indeed. Professor Iversen,
thank you very much for coming to give evidence today. I am so
glad that you have been able to come in so soon after your appointment
as the Interim Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs. I would like to start with a question about mephedrone
and the recent deaths of Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith.
No doubt you have followed the tragic deaths of these two young
people which took place last week. I understand that the Advisory
Council is currently looking at these issues. Do you first of
all have any views about mephedrone, whether or not it should
be legally sold in this country?
Professor Iversen: First, Chair,
thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. Of course,
mephedrone is at the top of everyone's priority list and the deaths
of young people when drugs are implicated is a tragedy. The fact
that mephedrone has been implicated in the deaths of young people
is tragic and gives us even more urgency to do the job that the
Advisory Council have been doing since the middle of last year,
I might say. We had a working party on so-called "legal highs",
that is, psychoactive substances available legally in this country.
That has been operating since the Home Secretary asked us to do
this about a year ago. As a consequence, already two groups of
such drugs, the synthetic cannabis derivatives in the product
called Spice and the synthetic benzylpiperazines, which were available
legally, have both have been brought under the Misuse of Drugs
Act as of December last year.
Q2 Chair: Some might feel that is
a very long time when you have the deaths of young people. This
particular drug has been banned in a number of countries, including
Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Israel; therefore, those countries
regard it as being dangerous, but in our country we seem to be
waiting for a working party. That is not much comfort for the
parents of those who are concerned about the fact that it is readily
available on the internet.
Professor Iversen: The working
party had alerted the rest of the Advisory Council in autumn of
last year. As you know, following Professor Nutt's dismissal and
resignations, there was a brief period of hiatus, but by December
the Advisory Council was sufficiently concerned to have written
a letter to the Home Secretary alerting him to the possible dangers
of mephedrone and alerting him to the fact that we were in the
process of setting up an evidence-finding review, which we are
still doing.
Q3 Chair: So if we get the process
right a working party will have been set up in the middle of last
year, almost a year ago?
Professor Iversen: Yes.
Q4 Chair: You wrote to the Home Secretary
at the end of December.
Professor Iversen: Yes.
Q5 Chair: Did you ever get a reply
to your letter from the Home Secretary?
Professor Iversen: Yes indeed.
Q6 Chair: And what was his reply?
Professor Iversen: Following my
appointment as Interim Chair I had a personal meeting with the
Home Secretary on 2 February.
Q7 Chair: About this issue?
Professor Iversen: About this
and various other issues but this, of course, was high on his
list and my list of priorities. In February this year we held
an evidence-gathering meeting to which we invited various independent
experts from outside the Advisory Council as well as the Council
members and we had a very useful fact-finding day. We are now
this week going to put a draft report of our recommendations to
the Technology Committee of the Advisory Council which deals with
technical medical harm issues, and we will be in a position, I
hope, and again I can only speak on behalf of the Council; I do
not give you my personal opinion—
Q8 Chair: Of course, but you will
understand that the parents of Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith,
one aged 18 and the other aged 19, would find this a very bureaucratic
response. They would argue, and some members of this Committee
would argue, that this is an unsatisfactory delay if you have
known about these dangers for the last year, if this drug has
been banned in five countries, if it is still readily available.
They are waiting for the bureaucracy of letters going from you
to the Home Secretary, of working parties and evidence sessions
taking place when everyone agrees that this drug is very dangerous.
It is being used in Britain at this moment. It is available on
the internet. There are websites where you can purchase it. Surely
we would expect more from the Advisory Council and the Government
than just waiting for a report to be concluded?
Professor Iversen: And we have
as a policy in our drugs legislation that we only act when we
have gathered together sufficient scientific medical evidence
for a drug's harmfulness, and we are in the process of doing that
here. We do not have the latitude that some other countries have
of placing an immediate temporary ban on imports, as has been
done in some European countries. However, I would say they have
done only half of the job because they have banned particular
compounds, such as mephedrone. If we come to recommend that these
compounds be brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act we shall recommend
a generic scope that will cover all known derivatives of mephedrone,
either those made now or those that could be made in the future,
so we will do a more systematic job than other countries have
done so far.
Q9 Chair: In your personal view on
mephedrone as opposed to the views of the Committee as a whole
do you think that this should be banned straightaway? Obviously,
this is a personal view.
Professor Iversen: I am here as
Chairman of the Advisory Council. I am not going to give you my
personal views. I would say, however, as a personal view, as a
pharmacologist these drugs are amphetamines by another name and
I know that amphetamines are harmful, so I think you can deduce
my conclusion from that.
Chair: We will be writing following this
session to the Home Secretary about these matters. We just think
the delay is most unsatisfactory given the dangers that are inherent
in it.
Q10 David Davies: I think I may have
missed something there, Professor Iversen, but you said that we
do not have the latitude of other countries to bring in an immediate
ban. Why is that exactly?
Professor Iversen: That you will
have to ask the Home Secretary. That is legislation; it is not
my purview.
Q11 David Davies: But if another
country can do it why can we not just say, "This is dangerous.
We are banning it"?
Professor Iversen: We do not have
that power, as I understand it, in the drugs legislation.
Chair: We will come back and explore
that later on in the session.
Q12 Bob Russell: Professor Iversen,
following on from the Chairman's line of questioning, is it feasible
for the Council to conduct evidence reviews, which necessarily
take several months, when it only takes one high-profile drug-related
death, as we have had an example of, for there to be immediate
calls to ban a substance?
Professor Iversen: Yes, but I
still have to do my job of providing an evidence-based case. I
cannot indulge in knee-jerk reflexes to whatever event has happened.
Of course it is tragic to have drug-related deaths, we all feel
very deeply for the parents of those children, but I cannot base
the UK's drug policy on media responses.
Q13 Bob Russell: Like you, I am making
the point without necessarily agreeing with it, because if I had
anything to say all legal drugs would be banned, but I cannot
have that power, so is the Council's considered advice always
going to be overtaken by events in this way or do you think you
can hold the line, as you have indicated?
Professor Iversen: I do not think
it has been overtaken in this case. The Home Secretary has made
it very clear in his statements that he is awaiting advice from
the Advisory Council. The Home Secretary and the Advisory Council,
as you may know, had a joint meeting face-to-face in November
last year in which we agreed on a set of working principles so
that we could operate together with the Home Office rather better
than the Advisory Council had been doing up to that point. One
of the principles was that the Home Secretary of the day would
not pre-judge issues by issuing his decision in advance of any
advice received from the Advisory Council and the present incumbent,
Alan Johnson, has adhered very stringently to that policy, I am
glad to say.
Q14 Bob Russell: So, if I understand
you, the Advisory Council is resolute that it is not going to
be steamrollered into making hasty decisions?
Professor Iversen: Yes, but I
also said that we hoped to be in a position by Monday of next
week to make a recommendation to the Home Secretary. I cannot
tell you what that recommendation is because the Council has not
met to make its decision, but we have a draft report virtually
ready.
Q15 Chair: Lord Mandelson is not
the Home Secretary yet but I hear that he told the BBC on 17 March
that the Government was looking at this. He did not mention the
Advisory Council in respect to mephedrone, but he said the Government
would be looking at this very speedily indeed.
Professor Iversen: I cannot comment
on what Lord Mandelson said but—
Q16 Chair: Absolutely, but you hope
your report will go to the Home Secretary on Monday?
Professor Iversen: Yes. I report
to the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary has said very clearly
on a number of occasions that he is awaiting our advice before
he comes to a decision.
Q17 Chair: How long do you think
would be a reasonable time to expect a decision?
Professor Iversen: One of our
complaints about the relationship with the Home Office in the
past and one of the agreements that we made with the Home Secretary
in November was that when the Advisory Council made some recommendation
the Home Secretary should give it a period of due consideration.
However, in this instance I think the national priority is such,
with drug-related deaths as you have already said, that we would
be flexible about this.
Q18 Mrs Dean: Could one solution
to the problems created by the continual emergence of new drugs
be the introduction of a holding category in the classification
system, which would allow a temporary ban whilst the evidence
on harm is reviewed?
Professor Iversen: I know that
Roger Howard of the UK Drug Policy Commission has said things
this week about having a new category "X" as they describe
it, a temporary holding category. This is an issue for the Home
Office rather than the Advisory Council. If asked to comment or
give advice we would be happy to do so but we have not so far
been asked. My personal view is that this is no solution at all
for the current mephedrone/cathinone problem because the category
X has not been sufficiently defined—what it is, how it would
work and how it could be used in this instance. If it was anything
similar to the New Zealand Government's Category D, which was
introduced a few years ago and covered for a short while the benzylpiperazine
legal highs, that amounted to no more than the ban we have on
selling alcohol or tobacco to under-18s and the benzylpiperazines
remain legally available to the adult population. I am afraid
with the internet availability of these drugs nowadays that sort
of ban is almost impossible to enforce. The New Zealand Government,
although it still has a Category D, does not use it any more.
I think these are very complex issues. It may be that some solution
of that type could be useful but I do not think it is going to
help us in this instance.
Q19 David Davies: Professor Iversen,
what are relationships like now between your Council members and
the Home Secretary? Have the principles of working set out in
your joint statement in November been adhered to?
Professor Iversen: As I said in
a previous answer, the Home Secretary has adhered very strictly
to one of our principal conditions, which was that the Government
should not pre-judge issues by offering decisions in advance of
any advice given; otherwise the advice is completely superfluous,
so I would say that relations at the present time are very much
improved and my relations with the present Home Secretary are
good and I believe that is true for the rest of the Council.
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