Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009
MR SEBASTIAN
SAVILLE
Q80 Patrick Mercer: Mr Saville, in
2007 a gram of cocaine in Nottingham cost £60 or £70
but that fell last year to £30 or £40. Can you comment?
Mr Saville: I would say that is
in line with the general decrease in the price of Class A drugs.
You can look at a more extreme change: in 1979 a gram of cocaine
or heroin was about £100. Some of you will remember what
£100 could buy in 1979; I would venture to say probably about
£300 worth of product today, so in real terms something which
cost £300 a gram in 1979 now costs ten times less. There
is no other consumable product which this applies to—only
technology where calculators have got cheaper because of technology,
but whether it is beer, butter or cheese all other consumables
have gone up except illegal drugs.
Q81 Mrs Dean: You suggest that dealers
are targeting lower grade and therefore cheaper cocaine on younger
people and therefore they find it easier to buy the drug in pubs
and clubs. What would be the effect of that and are they going
to remain, do you think, occasional recreational users or are
they going to be more addicted and persistent users?
Mr Saville: As I said at the beginning,
thankfully the vast majority of people who experiment with cocaine,
as substantiated by the World Health Organisation Report and indeed
many others do not go on to develop serious problems. The issue
of cheaper cocaine—there has been much talk about the two-tier,
three-tier markets, people will buy what is available and when
you go into a pub and you have a double whisky, whether you dilute
it with a bit of cocaine or not you still get the effects of the
double whisky. I do not really see what the issue is about levels
of purity when people are using it at a low level.
Q82 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Saville, you
have told us that in your view cocaine is a nice drug to take
and that is why people take it and you have given the impression
that we should not advertise and say that it is bad or it is evil
or anything like that, but do you share that view with regards
to crack cocaine in particular?
Mr Saville: Absolutely not and
I do not think we should advertise it saying it is wonderful,
I am saying what we should not do is say that everybody who takes
it is evil or bad or dysfunctional because that is just not true.
What I am saying is we should tell the truth basically.
Q83 Gwyn Prosser: I am not talking
about drugs in general, I am talking about crack cocaine in particular
as opposed to cocaine.
Mr Saville: Crack cocaine is a
direct result of prohibition. Crack cocaine was developed as a
way of targeting—
Q84 Gwyn Prosser: That might be the
result.
Mr Saville: But that is very important;
we seem to gloss over these things. Crack cocaine was developed
in the United States to target poor people where it was rather
difficult to sell packet cocaine because of temperature and unit
sales and it was very effectively done. It is much like we sell
alcohol, we sell big bottles to poor people—
Q85 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Saville, I want
to get to the bottom of the difference between the drugs. All
of the anecdotal evidence that I have, whether it is in my own
community or speaking to police officers in the front line or
even speaking to addicts, there is a huge sub-divide between taking
a line of cocaine perhaps at a nightclub although I do not support
that—
Mr Saville: And smoking crack
cocaine.
Q86 Gwyn Prosser: And taking crack
cocaine. Is it not the case that crack cocaine alters people's
mind bend, it can make people frenzied, it can make them violent,
it can make them attack people with no apparent motive, is that
not the case?
Mr Saville: Crack cocaine has
disastrous effects on huge swathes of our community without doubt.
Its effect reaches the brain much quicker, it is a much more toxic
drug, I do not disagree with anything you have said. Some of the
more extreme things like it makes everybody violent and attack
people are probably a slight exaggeration.
Q87 Gwyn Prosser: If you accept that
will you also accept that by taking this very easy, cosy attitude
to drugs in general—it is a nice experience and we should
not be labelling it—it is a clear gateway to people to take
crack cocaine. You have said in your own evidence that there was
an evolution between people taking cocaine and then not affording
to take cocaine proper and going downmarket to crack cocaine.
Is that the case?
Mr Saville: I do not know where
you got this impression that I take an easy, floppy approach to
drugs, I certainly do not. We should have a more effective regulated
market which we do not have now and we should not assume that
everybody who takes drugs is evil or bad. I am not saying that
we should all be encouraging people to take drugs whatsoever.
Q88 Gwyn Prosser: I will look at
your evidence in the transcript. Lastly, you will have heard the
evidence er had from the Chairman of SOCA—
Mr Saville: Unfortunately not,
I was not in the room. There was no room for me.
Q89 Gwyn Prosser: The Chairman of
SOCA gave us the impression that they were having an impact on
drug markets and the evidence for that was because the purity
of cocaine was reducing, it was more corrupt, and that cocaine
bought on the market today might just be 20% cocaine and 80% other
substances. Your evidence I understand suggests that that change
in purity is nothing to do with the impact of SOCA or the enforcement
agencies, it is all to do with a different type of dealer on the
street. Do you want to tell us about that?
Mr Saville: It is to do with marketing.
There is perfectly available pure cocaine in the UK. When it arrives
in the UK it is largely of a pure quality, but by the time it
gets to the street where most of the seizures and most of the
analysis by forensic experts tales place it has often been cut.
If you want to sell cocaine widely to people in nightclubs and
things and you want to make a bit more money you will mix it with
things. People seem to be quite happy to buy that.
Q90 Bob Russell: The phrase "recreational
drugs" reminds me of the gloss that is put on the IRA thuggery
and calling them "punishment beatings". How can a drug
be recreational if it has not been prescribed for medicinal purposes?
Mr Saville: I suppose in much
the same way as alcohol. Do you never drink?
Q91 Bob Russell: The point is that
alcohol is not illegal. Can you just remind the Committee, what
is the drug that comes out of Afghanistan?
Mr Saville: That is produced there?
Q92 Bob Russell: What emanates from
Afghanistan?
Mr Saville: Opium is grown there
and it is made into codeine and heroin.
Q93 Bob Russell: Do you not think
you ought to put a bus campaign up saying by taking these drugs
you are assisting in the deaths of British soldiers? Would that
not be a more accurate observation?
Mr Saville: No. Indeed, I had
a letter published in one of the broadsheets just before the soldiers
were being sent to Afghanistan and my letter was of great concern
that this was going to lead to the deaths of soldiers who would
end up fighting an unwinnable war on drugs.
Q94 Bob Russell: Would you accept
that those who take the drugs consumed in this country, which
emanate from Afghanistan, are in part responsible for the deaths
of British soldiers?
Mr Saville: No.
Q95 Mr Clappison: You have perhaps
anticipated my question but on the assumption that you want to
see fewer people using drugs and using cocaine, what would be
the best way, in your view, of reducing demand for it?
Mr Saville: I would like to see
fewer people being affected harmfully by cocaine. That may not
necessarily mean fewer people using it. We would like to see fewer
people using crack cocaine. How can we more effectively get messages
to people? We know how to; we have been very successful with our
smoking campaign; we give honest, scientific advice to people,
we do not go round giving untruths to people, we tell them scientifically
what happens. I have a report here which is unfortunately embargoed
until Friday which has been undertaken in six European countries
where they took sample groups of over 1,000 people each and they
asked them all "What is it that would stop you using illegal
drugs?" On average, in all the countries, it was between
8% and 10% who referred to the law, the rest said information
about health, whether I actually wanted to take the drug, so this
idea that you can arrest your way out of a drug problem has really
been proven beyond doubt. In America there are nearly 2.5 million
people in jail and half of them are there for drug offences, yet
they have the biggest drug problem in the world.
Q96 Chairman: What is the population
here? It is 2.5 million in America.
Mr Saville: It is 2.3 million,
sorry.
Q97 Chairman: What is the population
here?
Mr Saville: The jail population
in this country is about 86,000.
Chairman: People with drug offences.
Q98 Mr Clappison: The 2.5 million
figure was the people in jail you said.
Mr Saville: Currently they have
the largest prison population in the world.
Q99 Chairman: But not related to
drugs.
Mr Saville: About half of them
are related to drugs.
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