Examination of Witnesses (Questions 61
- 79)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009
MR SEBASTIAN
SAVILLE
Q61 Chairman: Mr Saville, thank you
for giving evidence to this Committee today. We have you and Mr
Atha who will be giving evidence shortly after you. The Committee
is conducting an inquiry into the cocaine trade and your organisation
of course is involved in these matters—not in the trade,
obviously, but in the overall matter of drugs and prevention.
Your advertising campaign on buses, "Nice people take drugs",
has recently been pulled following a number of complaints that
were made about it. What did you hope to achieve with that campaign?
Mr Saville: First of all perhaps
I could offer some clarification because it was not pulled after
any complaints, there were no complaints and in fact the overwhelming
response has been of great support. There have been over 200,000
entries into Google about it.
Chairman: You need to speak up, I am
afraid, because the acoustics are very poor in this room.
Q62 Mr Winnick: You need to speak
much louder.
Mr Saville: Much louder, is that
better? There have over 200,000 entries into Google using "Nice
people take drugs" and the overwhelming response has been
very positive. It was pulled out of fear that there may be some
complaints, but indeed no complaints actually happened. I thought
I should clarify that because that was in the press release last
night. The reason we set about doing this is we wanted to do something
to highlight what we feel is a complete out-of-touch situation
with what is really the central part of the drug issue in this
country with politicians and the media, I mean the perception
that drugs are bad or evil we think does not help. We know that
over a quarter of the adult population in England and Wales have
tried drugs, well over a million people last year used Class A
drugs and to suggest, as the press would have us believe, that
they are all somehow bad and sad simply is not true, so we wanted
to bring this up to the front and hoped very much that it would
develop into discussion which clearly it has done; here I am discussing
it.
Q63 Chairman: You do not think it
would have the opposite effect, that it would encourage people
to take drugs like cocaine?
Mr Saville: Absolutely not, no.
Q64 Chairman: What is your next move
in respect of publicising this? You have taken these advertisements
off, it is off Google.
Mr Saville: We have taken them
off the buses because the company which puts them on the buses
has said we have to—indeed, we are looking to continue with
this campaign in other media, in other forms, and there will be
further examples coming out soon.
Q65 Mr Streeter: I did want to ask
you a question, and I hope you do not think it is a personal question,
but I was slightly worried by your first answer there. You do
not want to promote the use of Class A drugs in this country presumably.
Mr Saville: Absolutely not.
Q66 Mr Streeter: You want informed
debate about it.
Mr Saville: This raises a really
interesting point because people like us who call for greater
debate, greater examination of possible new ways, are always accused
of being pro-drug. Indeed, recently in the United Nations, when
I was there at the high level meeting in Vienna, the head of the
UNDOC stood up and said "Either you are with us or you are
pro-drug" and this is simply not true, we just want to have
a more intelligent debate about it.
Q67 Mr Streeter: Fair comment. What
are the factors encouraging young people today to experiment with
cocaine would you say, Mr Saville? Where do you start?
Mr Saville: Why do young people,
why does anybody take cocaine? Because it is a nice drug; it is
a social lubricant; people enjoy it and the vast majority of people
who take it come to relatively no harm at all—indeed, this
was supported by the World Health Organisation Report in 1995,
a very high level report, which came to that exact conclusion,
that the vast majority of people who experiment with cocaine come
to very little or no harm at all. Why is there increased demand?
We live in a global economy; everything is now more available
than it was before. Take kiwi fruit: in 1970 to find a kiwi fruit
was very hard, a bit like cocaine in 1970, you had to know exactly
where to go; now you can get kiwi fruit anywhere, just like cocaine.
Q68 Mr Streeter: Can I ask you whether
you take cocaine?
Mr Saville: Do I take cocaine
now? No, but I have done in my life.
Q69 Mr Streeter: That is how you
know that its effects are pleasant but not harmful you say.
Mr Saville: I said for the vast
majority of people it is not harmful; there can be disastrous
effects for some people—a bit like alcohol.
Q70 Tom Brake: I have got to ask
you this question although you will have to give a very short
answer because the Chairman will stop you spending too much time
dwelling on it, but if we have an intelligent debate about drugs
where do you think that will lead us in relation to cocaine for
instance?
Mr Saville: How can I give a very
short answer to that?
Q71 Chairman: Give us the answer
and I will cut you off when I think you have said enough.
Mr Saville: Fair enough. We need
to stop measuring success or failure by numbers of users. We seem
to be locked into this idea that success means a reduction in
the number of users, but we should be focusing more on the reduction
of harm that drugs cause. Supposing we started with a baseline
of five million people who use drugs; would we rather have seven
million people who smoked a bit of cannabis and took ecstasy once
every six months, or would we rather have half a million people
who smoked crack every day? Clearly we would rather have the former.
Where we need to go to is a place where we have proper regulation
of drugs, which we clearly do not have now. Drugs are completely
out of control, run by gangsters and we have no control whatsoever,
so I would like to see us moving to a place where we have greater
control, more regulation, make drugs less available to young people,
and the way we are doing it now is clearly failing in all those
respects.
Q72 Tom Brake: Better regulation
would mean drugs available through agreed outlets or what?
Mr Saville: That would take some
intelligent thought and discussion but we have to move to a place
where that has to be on the table and not this terrible fear that,
with respect, the politicians seem to have of even putting that
on the table because of a fear of what the press is going to say,
that that means somehow they are weak, weak on crime, giving up—that
is just not true.
Q73 Tom Brake: Can I perhaps come
back to a more focused question around cocaine. The British Crime
Survey shows that there is a levelling off of the use of crack
cocaine; is this a temporary levelling off, is it something that
you recognise and what might lead to an increase in the consumption
of crack cocaine?
Mr Saville: Crack cocaine is largely
used by some of the most marginalised sections of our community;
this is again supported by the World Health Organisation Report
1995 and probably the best thing that would reduce the use of
drugs like crack cocaine would be an improvement in people's circumstances.
Whether it has levelled off now; there is lots of discussion about
numbers, quite small margins, which are often little trends—it
is a bit like house prices, they go up one year, then they go
down, then they go up again. To draw any sort of significant conclusion
from relatively small margins and numbers we have to look at a
longer term.
Q74 Tom Brake: You have said an improvement
in their conditions could lead to a reduction. If we are going
into an economic recession that is going in the opposite direction
so you would anticipate an increase.
Mr Saville: I would venture to
say, yes.
Chairman: Thank you. David Winnick has
a quick supplementary.
Q75 Mr Winnick: You are obviously
pessimistic about the drug war being won; that is clear, is it?
Mr Saville: I think it is clear
to everybody that it is not being won, certainly for me, yes.
Q76 Mr Winnick: Therefore, do you
want a situation like over cigarettes or alcohol where the Government
does its best through various means to warn people of the serious
consequences? The banning of cigarettes in public places obviously
does not make them illegal; would you like a similar situation
regarding drugs—all drugs or some drugs?
Mr Saville: We need to be thinking
in that direction. A regulated market is better than an unregulated
market which is what we have now—drugs are widely available
in this very vicinity.
Q77 Chairman: You do not mean the
Palace of Westminster.
Mr Saville: Possibly. There is
no simple answer, to say all drugs tomorrow should be legalised,
I do not think that is so. We need to move incrementally towards
a proper regulated market, but that should be put on the table
for discussion. At the moment it never is because people are too
frightened of what the press are going to say about it.
Q78 David Davies: If SOCA believes
it is winning the war against the cocaine trade, your assessment
is, I take it, rather different.
Mr Saville: Yes. Cocaine is as
available. There is this issue of the alleged increase in price
which, interestingly enough, correlates exactly with the decrease
in value of the pound and the international cocaine market is
run in dollars, it is not run in sterling.
Q79 David Davies: I am trying to
apply what I know of the stock market to the drugs trade and perhaps
you can help me out a bit here. If the price is going up presumably
that is a good thing, is it not, it would indicate that supplies
are not getting through and it presumably is harder for people
to buy drugs if they are more expensive. We would rather there
were no drugs, but if there are to be drugs we want them to be
as expensive as possible do we not?
Mr Saville: First of all the issue
of them going up as I said just before, the reason SOCA have said
they have gone up is not much to do with their interdiction efforts,
it is more to do with the currency because the international cocaine
market is based on dollars. A year ago it was $2 to the £1
and it is now $1.50, so if you look at the figures they have put
forward they correlate exactly. Indeed, if you look at the small
print in their report they acknowledge this, but you have not
seen that in any of the headlines.
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