Memorandum submitted by Release
Release is the national centre of expertise
on drugs and drugs law—providing free and confidential specialist
advice to the public and professionals.
Release's submission is based on evidence obtained
through the provision of our services; our campaigns and the experience
and expertise of the staff at the organisation.
1. Is cocaine powder now a street-drug rather
than one used by the relatively well-to-do?
Cocaine has always been a two-profile drug.
Over recent years this has become more pronounced with the different
"markets" for the drug covering a wider spectrum. As
the Committee will be aware, Drugscope Drug Trends Survey 2007
identified that there had become a very clear distinction in the
two markets. The cheaper cocaine is heavily cut and the target
market is those with a limited disposable income—certainly
the number of young people using cocaine has increased (Hoare,
J and Flately, J Drug Misuse Declared: Findings from the British
Crime Survey, October 2008, 23) The Drugscope survey confirmed
that there could be a continued rise in the number of young people
using cocaine. Those more affluent consumers are targeted with
a higher quality form of the drug.
Cocaine has always had a two tier market—that
market has simply increased therefore becoming more distinct.
In reality, this means a greater availability of poor quality,
adulterated cocaine.
It is worth noting that the term "street"
drug is generally used as a reference for all "illegal"
drugs— the difference in the two tier market and the supply
routes are that the cheaper version is generally available in
clubs and pubs whereas those purchasing the higher quality version
will probably be able to rely on home deliveries. There is also
some evidence that there is an increase in the numbers of "well
to do" using crack cocaine.
2. The influence of "celebrity cocaine
culture" as criticised in the UNODC's critical report on
the UK last year.
Whilst we are critical of the UNODC trivialising
the drug debate in the UK, there is no evidence that young people
are influenced by celebrity drug use (an Addaction survey in 2008
asked 500 young people whether Kate Moss, Pete Doherty or Amy
Winehouse's drug use make taking drugs seem cool—86 % said
no: http://www.addaction.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/tale-of-two-generations.pdf).
Mr Costa, the current head of the UNODC appears
to be overly obsessed with this issue. He has often blamed the
world drug problem on a handful of celebrities. Recently he even
tried to blame celebrities for the problems West Africa is suffering
as a result of becoming a transit area. We would suggest that
this is a tactic to divert the press from the real issues, as
they are prepared to print almost anything that involves a celebrity.
This is apparent when one looks at the reporting of international
drug policy within the UK. The release of the UNODC report, mentioning
celebrities, got coverage in all the major newspapers and mainstream
media including BBC News and Sky News. Yet in March 2009 when
governments from all over the world met at the UN to discuss the
new 10 year strategy, the media coverage was all but absent from
the press (there were a couple of notable exceptions). This is
despite the fact that the inclusion of "harm reduction"
was rejected because consensus could not be reached, which results
in there being no obligation to provide clean needles and other
life saving equipment to drug users.
To summarise, whilst the UNODC position is unhelpful,
the media in the UK are responsible for ensuring this position
can be maintained.
3. The effectiveness of advertising campaigns
in deterring use
Advertising campaigns telling young people that
drugs are bad are ineffectual and fail to address the real issue
such as the motivation for using. The latest government campaign
against cocaine by FRANK using Pablo the dog became a popular
You Tube clip for its comedy value and has fast become an iconic
joke. We recommend that the Committee reviews the FRANK adverts
on You Tube, and notes the comments being left by viewers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66c9mJm2Ewk):
"There's a darker side to alcohol but? they
dont do an advert on that do they... lool Funny advert i completely
forgot that stop using cociane [sic] was the message..."
"This advert is excellent but it just makes
me want to go and do more coke, isnt that defeating the purpose?"?
The current advertising campaigns are only slightly
more sophisticated than the widely discredited "just-say-No"'
slogans of the last century. Many young people who witness their
brothers, sisters or friends using cocaine socially do not identify
with the strong negative image put out by FRANK as it does not
accord with their experiences of a functional lifestyle.
Advertising campaigns should inform and educate—the
message should include advice on how to stay safe when using drugs.
The current ethos behind advertising campaigns is clearly one
that aims to prevent people from using drugs, and this necessarily
leads to the simplistic "don't use cocaine" message.
Whilst this objective is valid, we strongly believe it would be
strengthened if it were run alongside adverts that acknowledged
that some people would choose to use cocaine anyway, and therefore
advise on the safest environments to do so and precautions one
should take in obtaining and using cocaine. Similarly, adverts
that inform users what signs to look out for to identify when
their cocaine use is becoming problematic and who to turn to for
support in such an eventuality would further enhance the credibility
of such campaigns.
4. Trends in the use of crack cocaine
There are a number of trends that have emerged
in recent years in respect of crack cocaine:
(i) a reduction in the purity of crack cocaine;
(ii) the rise in speedballing; and
(iii) the changing consumer and changing markets.
1. PURITY OF
CRACK COCAINE
There are a couple of methods of turning powder
cocaine into "free base", one involves using an alkali
in water to remove the impurities in order to obtain high purity
crack cocaine, (occasionally ether is used in the initial preparation)
This has traditionally been done by slowly heating the solution,
which results in crack cocaine (a euphoric smokeable formulation)
equal to the purity of the original cocaine (ie without the cutting
agents). However, there seems to have been a shift in the market
with producers now using quick methods of heating dampened powder
in microwaves, this binds the alkali (bicarbonate) to the adulterated
cocaine powder without washing out the impurities resulting in
significantly reduced purity levels. Traditionally "freebase"
would be c 80% pure; currently crack is around half as
pure by weight. The product is bulkier and buyers perceive that
they are getting a bigger "rock" for their money.
One of the reasons for this process is that
the current market is serviced by "for profit" dealers
while the middle level "user-come-dealer" who sells
to support a habit, has declined. Since the dealer is motivated
by profit only, the market has become less focussed on quality.
2. SPEEDBALLING
Speedballing is where a user ingests (usually
intravenously) heroin and cocaine concurrently. The nature of
the "speedball" experience (in common with the crack
piping experience) is a search for a constant "high"
and as cocaine is both quick acting and fast acting (ie The effects
take hold quickly and do not last long), this becomes a day/night-long
repetitive cycle of frustration interspersed with short euphoric
episodes lasting only as long as the drug succeeds in bombarding
the receptors in the brain with the required neurotransmitter.
As the experience is so intense many users will then drink, use
benzodiazepines and possibly cannabis to experience a come-down
that is less overwhelmingly depressing and dysphoric.
Heroin and cocaine combine in that one is a
stimulant and the other is a central nervous system depressant.
They are used in combination as they complement the euphoric effects
of each other. In "open markets" they are often sold
together; in some places it is very difficult to buy one without
the other, as dealers are often reluctant to be left with an excess
of one drug type since many injecting users demand both.
3. CRACK COCAINE
MARKET
It should be noted that "street drugs"
is a term often used to describe any drug on the illicit market.
In this context we are using "street" to denote drugs
sold in small quantities in an open market, often to those "speedballing"
by injection or to those purchasing individual rocks to smoke
on a pipe.
The market for powdered cocaine in this sense
of "street" is virtually non-existent. Powder cocaine
is more likely to be available through a closed market, in the
sense that the purchaser would need a personal introduction to
the dealer and the drug would often need to be ordered in advance.
This cocaine is usually of a higher quality. Another closed market
could be within a club or pub where, again, an introduction of
some kind would be needed, but quality is often less assured.
5. International collaboration: the responses
of the producer countries
We would contend that the most reliable information
in this area has come from the Drugs and Democracy Commission
which includes former presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil
and the former home affairs minister from Peru. None of this illustrious
group is hampered by having to tow the official line and there
is little reason to dispute what they say. Information can be
found at: http://drugsanddemocracy.org/blog/archives/category/highlights
It is notable that at this year's CND, Bolivia
announced its intention to have coca removed from the Schedules
of the 1961 convention.
6. International collaboration: effects on
the transit countries
25 years ago—cocaine found in the Caribbean
was small amounts brought in by tourists. There has always been
a local cannabis trade that has never created any significant
local problems, the plant is native to the island and grows wild
in abundance. With prohibition forcing cocaine smugglers to seek
less direct routes—the Caribbean was geographically perfect
for this purpose. This has led to a local cocaine (largely crack)
problem unimaginable 25 five years ago and a spate of violence
and incarceration that is destroying whole communities. The same
thing is now happening in West African countries—as if absolutely
nothing has been learned from the Caribbean experience.
[Release has asked an external expert for his
views on this issue: Professor Ben Bowling is professor of criminology
and criminal justice at King's College London]
The UK drugs strategy has failed to fulfil its
promise to reduce the availability of cocaine in Britain, but
in the Caribbean, drug prohibition has caused the problem that
it set out to cure. Cocaine travels to the Caribbean islands because
it is prohibited. Although there is a small domestic market, it
pales in comparison with the hundreds of millions of potential
consumers in North America, Europe and elsewhere. If coca leaf
and its derivatives were legally traded commodities like Colombian
coffee or bananas, the most efficient route to consumer markets
in North America and Europe would be by plane or boat direct or
through containerised shipping processes. Transhipment through
the Caribbean—with complex sea and air connections, numerous
intermediaries and many other risks and inefficiencies—are
only worth the added expense and increased risks because the market
is clandestine. It is not that interdiction has no effect. It
does affect the behaviour of the traffickers in their choice of
routes. However, it is widely agreed that interdiction tends to
displace the trade—like stepping on a balloon. When you
step on one place, the balloon bulges elsewhere.
In his prophetic book, the Drug Takers
researched in the 1960s and published on the eve of the 1971 Misuse
of Drugs Act, Jock Young predicted that the criminalization of
marijuana in Britain would have the opposite results from those
intended. Prohibition, he argued, would entrench and possibly
even foster the popularity, availability and use of other drugs
by linking marijuana markets with those for barbiturates and opiates.
Young's predictions apply equally well to the Caribbean. Looking
back at the 1960s, the pattern of drug use in the region included
a relatively small number of people who used marijuana and very
little else. The essence of Young's argument is that labelling
something as criminal, invoking the forces of law and police intervention,
has the effect of creating the problems they set out to solve,
a process known as "deviancy amplification". Young's
starting point was the idea first put forward by WI Thomas that
"a situation defined as real in a society will be real in
its consequences".[58]
The Caribbean islands follow a similar pattern
of unintended, but logically following consequences of the prohibition
of drugs. Young argued that psychotropic and narcotic drugs—those
consumed in the pursuit of pleasure or to change their mood drugs
are—commodities. The intention of prohibition of these drugs
is intended to wipe out their use altogether, and is justified
by policy makers on the moral ground that they are evil and on
the empirical ground that they damage the health of the user.
Prohibitionists assume that users will be deterred by the threat
of sanctions and the incorrigible traffickers will be deterred
or incapacitated by law enforcement. If prohibition fails to achieve
this goal and demand remains, a number of socially harmful consequences
follow directly from the drug's illegal status.
The illegality of drugs means that the only
possible means of supply for those who choose to use them despite
prohibition and the risk of getting caught, is through clandestine
markets. In other words, prohibition creates a clandestine market.
Penalties for the possession or supply of drugs means that only
the most organized sellers in the market can survive the risks.[59]
Therefore the clandestine markets based previously on kinship
networks or by tourists travelling from one part of the world
to another supplying extended families, so called "social
supply", gives way to "commercial supply" and the
creation of a highly organized segmented market. Strategic connections
are made between growers, entrepreneurs connecting the growers
to the trans-shippers.
The trans-shipment process requires equipment
used for legitimate trades, such as boats and airplanes, people
who can do packaging and boxing and driving, ferrying, banking,
accountancy. Smuggling also requires relationships with law enforcement
agents, therefore police, customs and airport security become
corrupt. Businessmen have links with government ministers and
civil servants and a wide range of people across civil society.
Only the people who are most organized and who are most entrenched
can survive the risks involved in trans-shipping drugs and therefore
it becomes more of a business. Because they exist in the clandestine
market, profits that can be made from drugs are much larger than
normal commodities. This attracts previously disinterested members
of society from all social classes to become involved in the trade.
This includes the poorest and economically most vulnerable members
of society ie the workers who do the packing, warehousing, driving,
piloting, couriering and other manual and semi-skilled work in
the business. A significant section of the economy is involved
in the drugs trade (published estimates have suggested 40% of
Jamaica GNP), and all social classes and occupations—journalists,
sports people, entertainers, embassy staff, airport baggage handlers—have
been convicted of involvement in the drugs trade.
The clandestine nature of this market means
that there is no possibility of access to formal systems of regulation
and social control. In any business there are conflicts between
the shippers and producers who have the interest of maximising
the prices for their products. All of the middlemen have to be
paid and require social control [since they don't have] access
to the formal systems, to the courts, the police and so on. Informal
systems of social control emerge within the market and these are
based on violence and increasingly armed violence. Arming of street
level operatives within the drugs trade has the effect of arming
society more generally. Armed enforcers begin to identify themselves
as soldiers who are prepared to kill for money and are also prepared
to meet their own deaths.[60]
Clandestine markets require business involvement
in international partnerships that would not be required in the
case of a legal and traditional form of international trade. Hence
the "balloon effect" in which drugs traffic is displaced
from Columbia to Central and South America, the Caribbean and
Africa. The Caribbean islands have only become a trans-shipment
point because of the prohibition of drugs and the use of law enforcement
resources that have displaced a more efficient route to one that
is less efficient and involves new locations. Trans-shipment through
the Caribbean brought cocaine on the islands for the first time
and then quickly became entrenched within the local markets with
a resulting "spill over" into local cocaine usage. Young
argues that the intensifications of police action serve to increase
the organization and cohesion of drug markets. The destruction
of the Cali and Medelin cartels, however, had the effect of creating
a much more complex network type of organization which involved
smaller loose associations built around particular drug importation
projects. Nonetheless, the key point is that police action has
consequences for the shape and size and nature of the drugs markets
within a particular place and in other places and their relationships
between them.[61]
Trans-shipment becomes more systematized long
term and concerned with large regular profits. International connections
are forged by importers linking supply, trans-shipments and markets.
The capital generated required to make the trans-shipment becomes
very large and linked with other forms of organized crimes such
as arms and people trafficking. The scale of profit, complexity
of the business requires an increasingly powerful system of policing
involving increasingly powerful weapons and we have seen battlefield
weapons and routine use of side arms and a ruthlessness in their
use which also has a prominence in the ruthless violence of organizations
such as the mafia who it should also be pointed out are role models
from many people who are in the organized client business. Tactical
law enforcement successes have specific predictable (if unintended
and unwanted consequences). The seizure of drugs removes profits
which must then be recouped by more business activity and the
repayment of debts and spark violent conflict. Arrest of low-level
operatives are replaced by hitherto law abiding individuals. Post
arrest intelligence gathering and cultivation of informers creates
distrust within organizations and can lead to violent conflicts.
Arrest of mid-level and upper level operatives destabilises markets
and triggers internecine conflict.
These micro-social processes show how drug trafficking
has become amplified in the Caribbean as prohibitionist policies
have been pursued. One of the consequences of the emergence of
a global narcotics prohibition regime has been the arming of drugs
gangs and criminality over the same period. The most generous
assessment is that cocaine has become available, and lethal violence
has exploded in spite of the best efforts of law enforcement.
A more challenging conclusion is that prohibition has caused the
problems of armed violence, corruption and money laundering—while
failing to solve the original purpose, namely repressing availability
and reducing local consumption. However, I have reached the conclusion
that the global drug prohibition regime has had the effect within
the Caribbean of creating the problem that it sets out to cure—by
bringing cocaine to the islands—and also producing unwanted
side effects including high levels of homicidal violence.
The overwhelming emphasis on attempt to reduce
the supply of cocaine to North America and Europe has skewed policy
development and operational practice away from pressing security
priorities such as firearm trafficking, natural and man-made disasters,
food and water shortages, disease prevention and sustainable economic
development. The resources spent on maintaining security forces
tasked largely with the pursuit of drugs traffickers could have
been used in these other spheres. Although the Caribbean counter-drug
policy was originally developed to serve the interests of the
countries of North America and Europe, it was hoped that this
would achieve a mutual benefit to the Caribbean. If the availability
of cocaine and levels of lethal violence are taken as indicators
then it must be concluded that the region has not become safer
and more peaceful as a result. Failure of this sort could be described
as "policy iatrogenesis", borrowing the medical term
used to describe something that is induced unintentionally by
a physician through his diagnosis or treatment.
[Extract from Professor Benjamin Bowling's forthcoming
book, Policing the Caribbean]
7. International collaboration: the EU's external
borders
The EU is a big consumer of cocaine, and is
targeted accordingly by international trafficking outfits. (Sources
for the following are "Project Cola: EU Cocaine Situation
Report", Europol September 2007, and the ECMDDA reports.)
Main routes for cocaine into EU are maritime,
crossing the Atlantic in containers from South America to Spain
and Portugal, and ports in Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands.
Increasingly, as above, West Africa has become an important transhipment
route, following enforcement pressure on the Caribbean. West Africa
is primarily used because governance and enforcement are not highly
developed. Fishing boats then take the cocaine on to the Iberian
countries.
The EU has set up a Lisbon based agency to focus
interdiction (MAOC-N, the Maritime Analysis and Operational Centre
on Narcotics) and various other initiatives, the idea being to
have intelligence-led and globally cooperative enforcement.
In the historical perspective, however, if we
examine the technological and programmatic changes in this struggle
between dealers and law enforcement, the dealers have always kept
a step ahead. They have the initiative; lots of funds, inelastic
demand, and the mobility that comes with not being territorially
based. There are always new regions where governance is poor and
poverty sharp, and these provide the channels that the traffic
uses. It's a hydra and it isn't going anywhere unless humans stop
wanting to take things that change their minds and moods.
8. SOCA's role and the wholesale price of
cocaine
We have recently heard from SOCA that their
interdiction work has led to the price of cocaine rising by about
25%. This rise has come about at the same time that Sterling has
fallen against the Dollar by about the same amount. The international
cocaine trade is of course based in US Dollars and we would therefore
suggest that the recent price increase in the UK has much more
to do with these currency issues and little to do with anything
that SOCA has done.
9. Police response: possession and dealing
It seems that police responses to cocaine possession
and dealing offences can differ vastly depending on the policing
area and individual(s) concerned. As far as possession is concerned,
there is some evidence that wealthier individuals and celebrities
get treated far more leniently than those who are less socially
privileged (see for example the case of the Tetra Pak heirs).
Despite Ian Blair's vow to target middle class cocaine users who
think it is "socially acceptable", it may be that police
response to cocaine is sometimes mitigated by the fact that it
is still often viewed as a more widely tolerable drug in today's
commercial and competitive society than other drugs such as heroin.
The police and courts have a tendency to come
down very heavily on all possession with intent to supply cases,
regardless of possible mitigating circumstances. The police will
almost always charge in such cases and the individual will usually
be sent to the Crown Court for sentencing. One such example would
be a youth who is acting as a "courier" and may be found
with several wraps but no cash and the mitigating circumstances
of being socially and/or financially obliged to courier drugs;
in our experience such cases are often sent from the Youth Court
to the Crown Court and a lengthy custodial sentence is then handed
down. While this may be an attempt to deal with curbing commercial
operations using deterrent sentences, these sentences often do
not mirror the extent of culpability as far as the individual
is concerned and can lead to greater social and personal problems
in the long term.
There also seems to be some discrepancy when
it comes to the police and Crown Prosecution Service deciding
what might constitute personal possession of cocaine and what
might constitute possession with intent to supply. One individual
might successfully plead that his seven wraps of cocaine were
all for personal use, where another might be charged with possession
with intent to supply. Although other surrounding evidence such
as large amounts of cash must be taken into account, it is our
experience that the decision as to which charge to lay is often
arbitrary and therefore can be unreasonable.
June 2009
58 Young 1971, page 27. Back
59
Young 1971, page 57. Back
60
Laurie Gunst, Born fi' Dead: A Journey Through the Jamaican
Posse Underworld. New York: Henry Holt and Company. (1995). Back
61
Reference Young 1971, page 45. Back
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