The Cocaine Trade - Home Affairs Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40 - 60)

TUESDAY 9 JUNE 2009

MR MARTIN BARNES AND MR HARRY SHAPIRO

  Q40  Mr Winnick: We had a previous inquiry into drugs in general. Now we are concentrating on cocaine and we know that since our last inquiry, as has been confirmed today, the use of cocaine has certainly increased. Do you think that the existing legislation helps or hinders in trying to reduce demand?

  Mr Barnes: It is an important question. This morning, for example, I was giving an interview for a radio programme about the decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal. About eight or nine years ago they did not legalise drugs but they took penalties for possession of relatively small amounts out of the criminal justice system and introduced essentially administrative penalties. A general point to make is that when it comes to drug policy, I probably do not need to tell you this as Committee members, it is one of those areas where politicians do get anxious; the debates, the issues can become quite polarised and quite emotive. When people ask whether prohibition is working, whether legalisation is the answer, the example I will often refer to in terms of the difficulties of opening up the debate and changing drug policy is if you look at the controversy around the reclassification of cannabis which, on the scale of that spectrum between prohibition and legalisation, was a very modest change. The maximum sentence for possession was reduced from five to two years, the maximum penalty for supply was increased to bring it in line with class B, but one of the reasons the Government went against the advice of its own advisory council on cannabis reclassification was because it was felt that the decision politically, with hindsight, and I do not necessarily share the view, was a mistake. We do need to look robustly and ask important questions about the effectiveness of current legal frameworks.

  Q41  Mr Winnick: It would be useful if the debate opened up rather than politicians constantly on the defensive, accusing each other of being soft on drugs.

  Mr Barnes: Yes, you have nailed it. The public is probably more nuanced and sophisticated when it comes to drugs as an issue than perhaps some—some, not all—of the more extreme and alarmist headlines potentially would suggest. On the point made about the changes in Portugal, for example, a lot of people in Portugal are not even aware the change was made. It has not generated that big controversy or high-level debate. A couple of years ago, the previous Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, when he gave a statement to Parliament about the previous review of cannabis reclassification, did promise a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. We welcomed that, the advisory council welcomed that, a few months later the Government dropped that commitment. I do not think it is wrong to have that review, but the key drivers essentially should be basically what the evidence can tell us on what works; drug policy generally should be proportionate, should be pragmatic, but the overarching template touchstone should be how best we minimise the harms. If we can conduct the debate within that sort of framework, it takes us forward a bit.

  Q42  Mr Winnick: What do you say to those who argue that whatever the defects in existing legislation, at least it does prevent more people from embarking on taking drugs and some of them of course really dangerous drugs?

  Mr Barnes: It feels intuitive to say that is what the current making drugs illegal achieves. Recently, for example, one of the models of Transform, which supports legalisation, in terms of what might happen if drugs were legalised, does suggest an increase in use. The difficulty is that we do not really have the direct evidence to establish that making drugs illegal through the criminal justice system does directly impact on levels of use. It feels intuitive but as yet we do not have the evidence to support that. There is evidence that amongst young people the legal status, that it is illegal, can reinforce the negative attitudes towards drugs, can reinforce the resistance when being offered drugs or peer pressure. However, on the wider canvas, we must say we would like that direct evidence really.

  Q43  Mrs Dean: Why do you think that we have an ageing drug population? Why do you think young people are not taking heroin and to some extent cocaine?

  Mr Shapiro: A lot of it is to do with fashion. That sounds a bit of a strange word to use in relation to the illegal drug market but drug use does go through different cycles which are to do with attitudes amongst people, availability and the alcohol/cannabis dynamic is quite significant here because of the ready availability of cheap alcohol which is now a serious concern for those who are looking after young people and also the increase in strength of cannabis which is available now, although I have to emphasise nothing like the strength which has been bandied about in the media, but stronger nevertheless. Also, psychological barriers get thrown up in terms of what young people see is what is fashionable, what is cool and all the rest of it. There is a lot of resistance to the idea of using crack amongst young people, but nevertheless, for those who are vulnerable for all sorts of different reasons, there are ready substitutes and increasingly they have become alcohol, cannabis and some other drugs as well and have created a different kind of profile for problematic drug use among young people, which is an issue for the treatment system because it still is not really geared up at the moment for helping those people who are not primarily opiate users. This is a problem which is recognised within the treatment system, but it may well have to modify and adapt its procedures to accommodate this in the future.

  Q44  Mrs Dean: The UN Office of Drugs and Crime has criticised what it saw as the UK's celebrity cocaine culture. How influential are celebrities?

  Mr Shapiro: That is a massive red herring, to be perfectly honest. Personally I think it is completely ludicrous to start blaming celebrities whose alleged use of dodgy, fuzzy photos of doing whatever are only made public because the tabloid press are prepared to put them on the front page and pay huge amounts of money for doing so. My take on this would be that it is the media which is glamorising celebrity drug use, not celebrities. Actually the All Party Drugs Misuse Group in 2008 heard from a group of young people associated with Mentor UK, which is a drug education charity and the MPs asked the young people what they think when they read about Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty or any of these people. The general response was that they felt sorry for them. They appreciate the fact that they are good singers or good songwriters but they just wish they would get their act together. There was a similar response on a radio show 1Xtra which is also targeted at a young audience; they did a phone-in and there was a similar kind of response. Nobody feels that these people are glamorous or there to be emulated and when young people get into using drugs, it is much more to do with what is going on in their own environments, their own family, their own community; very, very little evidence that celebrities have any part to play in this at all.

  Mr Barnes: The Liverpool John Moores University did do a literature review in 2006 and concluded that there was no evidence of a causal link between coverage of celebrity drug use and young people's level of use or even attitudes towards drugs. There is a related issue that one of the aspects of drug education in schools is sometimes to challenge the perception of some young people that drug use in some way is normalised. There is evidence that young people often overestimate levels of drug use in the population as a whole, indeed amongst their peers. Although we do need to look at how more effective we can make drug education, there is some research pointing to the fact that when you challenge that, that can reinforce the sort of negative attitudes to drug use, resisting peer pressure, offers of drugs. I just echo what Harry said: this is an issue that undoubtedly does hit the media every so often, it does generate debates. I took part in a radio programme and one of the panellists said in the context of Kate Moss's reported drug use that everybody is using cocaine. No, they are not actually; it is too high, it is a problem. It is that type of language and perception of the issue that we need to put into context and challenge. The interesting thing about Kate Moss of course was that it did not do her career any harm and I have not really quite worked out what happened there.

  Q45  Mrs Dean: So you do not believe the celebrity issue influences recreational use of cocaine either.

  Mr Barnes: When we are looking specifically at cocaine, the peak age of use is very late teens, early twenties. Fortunately class A drug use, cocaine use amongst younger people, those under 16, is still very rare. It does happen, it is a major concern when it does happen, but it is still very rare. The question is, if we are talking about the link between celebrity use and cocaine use, surely you would expect people in their late teens and early twenties to have a bit more of a sophisticated understanding about celebrities as role models in terms of affecting their attitudes and their use. Echoing back what Liverpool John Moores' research suggests, when it comes to younger people there is no evidence of that direct use. There are some times, very rarely, when a celebrity will come out with a prattish statement that will understate the harms that drugs can cause and it is at that time that we will sometimes comment to correct what we think is an unhelpful message around drug-related harms. Generally, we do not have the evidence that reported celebrity use leads to more people using the drug or increasing levels of harms associated with the drug.

  Q46  Chairman: Do you not feel that the courts should be tougher if a celebrity is found using cocaine because that would send out a greater message to those who may want to use that person as a role model?

  Mr Barnes: It is more appropriate that the courts should approach the case on the facts and apply the judicial mind in the right way. That is what people would expect from the criminal justice system, an appropriate response rather than trying to send out a message, whatever that might mean or then be subsequently interpreted.

  Q47  Bob Russell: Our two witnesses seem to have dismissed as a serious issue the celebrity cocaine culture. I wonder whether I could return to part of Mr Salter's line of questioning because you appear to dismiss another tenet, which is that there has been a sharp decrease in the purity of cocaine being sold.

  Mr Shapiro: No, I was not actually disputing the purity.

  Q48  Bob Russell: Could you clarify it? As I understood it, you were saying that if dealers were selling impure product then people would not go back to them and they wanted to maintain sales.

  Mr Shapiro: The point that I was answering was the idea that drugs were routinely cut with extremely noxious substances like Vim and brick dust, which have been mentioned, rat poison, all that kind of stuff. If you look at the data from the Forensic Science Service, you will see that those are rarely, if ever, found in samples which they test.

  Q49  Bob Russell: Let me try this line then. SOCA has noted a sharp decrease in the purity of cocaine being sold. Leaving to one side the different types of substance which have been used to bulk out the drug, what are the consequences of such a decrease in purity, if indeed there has been a decrease in purity?

  Mr Shapiro: In terms of what? In terms of the harms caused by the impurity?

  Q50  Bob Russell: I will let you answer how you want and then I will put in a supplementary.

  Mr Shapiro: There is no evidence at the moment that the fact that cocaine has been traditionally cut with sugars and is now often cut with phenacetin has made any difference to the harms which are being caused by the drug. You do not have people presenting for treatment or to A&E with different problems; there is no evidence that you suddenly have a wave of people presenting with different problems than they would have done before on the basis of what is in the drug they are buying.

  Q51  Bob Russell: Are SOCA correct then in noting that there has been a sharp decrease in the purity of cocaine?

  Mr Shapiro: Yes.

  Mr Barnes: Yes, they are; we are not challenging that. The evidence is clear both in terms of SOCA's analysis and also the Forensic Science Service. We published this in our magazine earlier in the year. In 1984 the average purity of cocaine examined by the Forensic Science Service was 63%, in 2005 45%, October to December last year 26%; one in five samples less than 9% pure cocaine. The evidence is clear that cocaine is a much less pure drug than it used to be and that it is being bulked out increasingly now with these new substances. It is an important issue because the primary driver for SOCA and enforcement agencies, and it is the right approach, is to minimise drug-related harms. When we see the nature of the drug that we have been using change, whatever the purity values, it is right that we ask whether that is getting us closer to reducing the harms. It could be, for example, that once the less naive drug user understands that what they are buying and probably paying the same price for is much less pure, it is heavily adulterated, there are substances in there which the evidence suggests can be of themselves harmful, that might cause more resistance and more people choosing not to use the drug. As yet it is a bit too soon to say that is an emerging issue because, as we said earlier, drugs do change over time; they go in and out of fashion as well as wider issues which can impact on levels of drug use.

  Q52  Bob Russell: So cocaine being a dodgy substance anyway making them less pure makes that drug even less healthy.

  Mr Barnes: It is difficult to say because it then depends on what the effect may be on the person's levels of use and patterns of use. One of the potential reasons why there is less pure cocaine available is because more people who use cocaine are mixing it with alcohol so they may not even be bothered almost about the exact quality of the stuff they are buying but the risk with that level of use is the potential increase in the health harms, because the combination of cocaine with alcohol creates that new chemical in the body which is potentially even more toxic on the liver. It is difficult to point a cause and effect and we do need more research. We need to look carefully at what the impact on levels of harms to the individual might be from the fact that the cocaine is less pure. What we might see is an impact on overall levels of use and attitudes towards the drug. It has lost a lot of its image of being in some way a clean drug, which it is not; it is dangerous. It is no longer seen as the drug of the rich and the famous and celebrities. The levels of prevalence show us that, but it is almost going a stage further in that as a drug it is almost going further down in terms of its perception and those associations.

  Q53  Bob Russell: You are saying that the health consequences are clearly serious. What about the financial consequences to the dealers if they continue to make this awful drug even less pure?

  Mr Barnes: There is no honour amongst the dealers of course. What they are in it for is to maximise their profits, but also to minimise the risk to their business. This is partly where SOCA's work comes in; it is about intelligence gathering, it is about looking at asset seizures, it is about working out where the networks are. Part of the reason why they are bulking it out is because, if they can sell it at the volume and sell more of it, they maximise their profits. A European Commission report was published in 2008 which does suggest that the revenue return on cocaine may be slightly less than it was ten years ago because of the overall decrease in the level of profits but as yet there is not much evidence to show that overall there has been any impact on the profits to the dealers. The point to make is that most of the profits tend to be at the higher end of the supply network. When you come down to the very low level dealers, it is much less so.

  Q54  Chairman: How effective do you think the government advertising campaigns have been to try to deter people, young people, those who are not young people, from using cocaine? Do you think they have been effective?

  Mr Barnes: We do not really have the evidence to point to the fact that public information campaigns reduce levels of use. There is a greater case for saying that appropriate, well-targeted public information campaigns may reduce levels of harm. They can raise awareness about the harms and the risks associated with drug use. That is not to say that it is not important to have public information campaigns; I am a big supporter of that. It is similar in terms of drug education in schools. If we expect or wish drug education to stop young people using drugs, that is a very big ask and the evidence is not there to say that it has that impact. What we do have evidence of is that it can increase awareness about the risks, it can increase coping skills and it can equip the older person to resist pressures to use drugs. The direct answer to your question is that I think public information campaigns are important for raising awareness, but there is no evidence that it impacts directly on levels of use across the population as a whole.

  Q55  Chairman: Mr Shapiro, do you agree with that?

  Mr Shapiro: Yes. Behaviour change through campaigns is very difficult to achieve. The evidence suggests that where people can feel that they are at direct risk, the campaigns in the 1980s around HIV/AIDS and the use of condoms, drink-driving campaigns as well demonstrate that where people can perceive an immediate risk there is a better chance of changing behaviour. Similarly with young people and smoking, if you are trying to project forward several years about the risk they might be facing, that is a much harder one to do. In fact we have not been that impressed with some of the way the Government have dealt not so much having public information campaigns but we have felt that some of the advertising aimed at young people has been a little bit patronising.

  Mr Barnes: We do have slightly different views on that, just to air our differences in public.

  Mr Shapiro: The evaluations that there have been around public campaigns suggest that while behaviour change is difficult to effect, it can at least reinforce negative attitudes.

  Q56  Chairman: Should the Government be spending more and make it better targeted than it has been?

  Mr Barnes: I am middle-aged now, trying to get into the mind of a young person in terms of what works around advertising. The focus groups and the young people can tell us. I suspect around some of the public information campaigns, particularly on illegal drugs, there is a tension between addressing a wider audience, sometimes the parents, than messages which are directly aimed particularly at young people. With some of the messages around drugs you probably need to be a little bit more slightly controversial about the risk to sexual health; those are the sorts of messages which probably will have a bit more impact on young people than some of the generalist campaigns that we have been seeing.

  Q57  David T C Davies: May I put it a bit more bluntly than you were because I tend to agree. Talking about people getting cancer and things in 20 or 30 years' time has no impact, but telling them they might end up impotent will.

  Mr Barnes: Yes, it does and similarly with some of the health messages around anabolic steroids. Blokes can develop breasts, they can shrink the testicles, that is the sort of thing that young people relate to rather than those health risks which might impact in 10, 20, 30 years' time.

  Q58  Ms Buck: We have already gone through a number of the factors which in different ways could impact upon demand. In summary, what would you think would be the priority of measures which might actually have an impact upon demand, price, quality, health warnings?

  Mr Barnes: Particularly looking at cocaine the key is that there is still an issue where people do underestimate the health risks and harms associated with its use. I do not have a lot of evidence to support that; it is largely anecdotal. I suspect that is largely older users who experiment with the drug. The evidence you heard earlier, that we are seeing more younger people presenting at A&E departments with heart related problems, the fact that it is a drug you can become dependent on, the increase in people presenting for treatment, is largely a response to the fact that there is more capacity there, but it is those messages which need to be reinforced and made stronger. In terms of general drug use, widening it out a bit, there is a role for education but I see prevention as being much more than about education. We do know, particularly in terms of young people, that some of the risk factors that can increase their likelihood of using drugs and becoming problematic drug users are related to factors such as poverty in the home, poor family relationships, truancy from school, not doing very well at school. I think we need to look at it as part of a broader canvas, to focus as much if not more on those prevention measures, treat drugs more as a public health issue. Yes, there is a role for enforcement but despite the big increase in drug treatment—and long may it continue because we do need it—I still do not think we have entirely got the balance right.

  Q59  Martin Salter: Similar question to the one I put to Professor Strang. It always seemed to me that any drugs policy ought to have the three Es—education, enforcement and effective treatment. Where do you think that the major emphasis needs to be in terms of a more coherent public response to the challenges posed by cocaine addiction, cocaine use and the cocaine trade?

  Mr Barnes: We do need to do more around treatment and a lot of work is going on around that area. We do not have substitute drugs for cocaine use. It was described earlier as fairly intensive intervention; that is not always the case but it does quite neatly describe the challenge, that investment around the public health, more intervention around the prevention side of it. I just give a plug. There is an early day motion which Dr Brian Iddon has tabled which basically recognises the importance of drug treatment and what it can achieve, supports continue investment and it would be a good thing if MPs could all sign it.

  Q60  Chairman: An immediate recommendation for the Committee. Before we go, as you know President Obama has just appointed a new drugs tsar and though there is not an absolute read-across between what happens in America and what happens in our country, does this give you any indication as to the way in which the new administration is going to deal with the issue of drugs?

  Mr Barnes: I think we will see inevitably a more progressive and evidence-based approach than we did under the previous administration. I do think that those people who are seeing this as some massive step forward probably need to be a little bit cautious because President Obama has also supported the efforts of the Mexican Government in terms of the enforcement activity going there which is turning pretty nasty. I hope we are going to see a much more progressive approach because the US still does have a very influential sway over the direction of travel for international UN drug policy and there are times when it has been directly unhelpful in terms of its positions to reduce drug-related harms, for example opposing the introduction of safe injection rooms, needle exchanges and a general harm reduction approach.

  Mr Shapiro: I think generally the appointment of a new drugs tsar might be more felt inside America in terms of its own domestic drugs policy than necessarily any big sea change internationally.

  Chairman: Thank you. Next week the Committee are taking a break from drugs to look at the cost of policing football matches, but we will return to this inquiry the week after. Mr Shapiro, Mr Barnes, thank you very much for giving evidence today.






 
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