Examination of Witnesses (Questions 105
- 119)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009
MR MATTHEW
ATHA
Q105 Chairman: Our final witness
is Matthew Atha, the Director and Principal Consultant, IDMU.
Mr Atha, thank you very much for coming to give evidence; I am
afraid we misplaced you formally before the last session began
but we are glad you are with us. Thank you for coming here. Why
do people use cocaine?
Mr Atha: Primarily it is a stimulant
drug so people use it to feel more energised, as a social lubricant,
and some people use it not necessarily for recreational purposes
but for functional purposes, to keep them awake, such as in the
1980s the City traders who were basically in a high pressure environment.
Some people therefore use it, as I say, to facilitate their work
in some cases, but the majority use it essentially for fun.
Q106 Chairman: Do some use it because
it is glamorous and it is seen to be a good thing in certain circles
to be using cocaine?
Mr Atha: Yes, certainly it has
that cachet that you do not get with other stimulants. One of
the points I was intending to make is that you do not need to
look at cocaine in isolation, you need to look at it within a
pattern of overall stimulant use. The majority of people who use
cocaine have also used amphetamine, for instance, and what you
tend to find is that if they are a stimulant user they will use
whichever stimulants happen to be available at the time.
Q107 Mr Streeter: Is the profile
of cocaine use changing in the UK?
Mr Atha: Yes and no. For this
inquiry I have been through our survey data going back 12 years
and we looked at the socio-economic status, the income, the sex
differences et cetera. There is actually very little difference
between people in employment and their rates of use of cocaine
and their attitudes to cocaine, but strong counter-intuitively
the AB socio-economic groups and those on the highest incomes
do give it a slightly lower rating and we do have a marginally
lower incidence. The highest levels of cocaine use are actually
amongst the unemployed and the lowest levels amongst students,
so what we find is that it is through all levels of society, it
is not just a rich man's drug even if it ever was always a rich
man's drug. I think what happens is that when the celebrities
are taking it they get snapped by the paps and they get outed
by the press but Joe Bloggs down the council estate never comes
to the attention of the media, so it has this image of being a
glamorous, celebrity-associated drug which is probably a false
image.
Q108 Mrs Dean: Can you tell us what
the price of a line of coke is on the street at the moment? Is
it true that it is cheaper than a pint of beer?
Mr Atha: A few years ago I was
quoted in a newspaper report saying it was cheaper than cappuccino.
It depends, obviously, on how big your line of coke is and the
price of a pint of beer, what part of the country you come from.
A line of cocaine would typically contain between 50 mg and 200
mg; 50 mg would be about £2 and 200 mg would be about £8,
so a small line of cocaine could be certainly less than a pint
of beer in most places and indeed less than a cappuccino.
Q109 Patrick Mercer: Mr Atha, is
price the main determinant for whether people use cocaine or not?
Mr Atha: I do not think so because
our surveys basically are targeted at the drug user population
rather than the general population so it is difficult to draw
UK-wide conclusions from it, but looking actually at the users
themselves a higher proportion of people used cocaine in the early
years of our survey when the price was £80 to £100 a
gram than do now when it is between £20 and £60 a gram.
Q110 Patrick Mercer: Linked to that
the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham are reporting an increased
incidence of people in their 40s coming in with cocaine-related
problems. What is your comment on that, is that across the country
or not?
Mr Atha: That is probably because
people in their 40s tend to have weaker hearts than people in
their 20s and they still think they are 20. I am 50 and just the
other day I climbed a mountain and regretted it because the last
time I did I was 15 years younger and although I was not particularly
fit then, I was a heck of a lot fitter than I am now. What I am
basically saying is that people who are continuing to use drugs
when they get into their 40s and 50s are more likely to suffer
the health consequences of it.
Q111 Bob Russell: Will the decrease
in purity have any effects on whether users continue to buy powdered
cocaine?
Mr Atha: That is actually a concern
of mine because certainly what we are finding is a much higher
incidence of very low purity cocaine which, up to two or three
years ago, would not have been considered merchantable, or if
people tried to sell it they would get their legs broken for instance.
Now that seems to be pretty much the norm as far as the street
level consumer is concerned, although we are still finding small
quantities—gram deals—as high as 70% or 80% in some
cases. Very much, therefore, the suggestion that there is a two-tier
or even a three-tier market does seem to be supported by our price
data.
Q112 Bob Russell: Do the mugs who
buy this stuff know that it is not as pure as they think they
are paying for?
Mr Atha: It depends whether they
have paid for good quality stuff in the past or not, and if somebody
is taking a line of cocaine that is only 10% or 15% purity, a
small line is probably not going to have much more effect than
a cappuccino.
Q113 Bob Russell: They are mugs then,
are they not?
Mr Atha: Yes, they are basically,
but the concern here is that if you go back ten years one of the
most successful police and customs operations that this country
has known called Operation Pirate effectively destructed the amphetamine
market. Average purity dropped from about 16% down to 4% or 5%
over the period of six months, regular use of amphetamine halved
but regular use of cocaine doubled. What we have to worry about,
therefore, if the purity of cocaine becomes too poor for the users
is will they turn to something else, and we have of course meth
amphetamine or crystal meths waiting in the wings which has never
yet gone beyond niche markets in the UK but is effectively uncontrollable
if it does take a hold.
Q114 Bob Russell: They would perhaps
be better off spending their money on something more sensible.
The British Crime Survey shows a levelling off in use of crack
cocaine; is this temporary and what are the pressures that might
lead to a rise in use?
Mr Atha: Put it this way, drug
users as a whole tend to have a very negative perception of crack
cocaine, pretty much like the rest of society does, so it is only
people that actually get into it and try it that tend to keep
on using it. It also has an association with heroin use and certainly
the impression that we are getting from our surveys is that the
use of crack relative to heroin has increased over the last ten
years. In terms of what would encourage more people to use it,
obviously availability is a factor. The other factor is that the
crack purities have also gone down, in fact even more dramatically
than powdered cocaine purities have, so that whereas 15 years
ago the purity of crack cocaine was over 80% I have recently come
across it as low as 11%. What they are mixing it with is actually
a concern because people are actually inhaling this stuff and
I do not think there has been any systematic research done by
the Forensic Science Service or other forensic agencies as to
what the adulterants are in crack cocaine; that should be a priority
for research.
Q115 Tom Brake: Could I just come
back to the two- or three-tier market that you referred to. Could
you explain why this operates, why in one area would someone be
selling something tab is 70% pure whereas in another area it would
be considerably less? What is driving that choice, is it that
the person who is selling it at 70% is more worried about having
his legs broken than the person who is reducing the purity?
Mr Atha: The person who is selling
it at 70% is more concerned about losing his reputation than his
legs because a lot of drug dealers rely on their reputations for
supplying good quality product and they all tend to have a clientele
that can afford to pay the extra prices and that they develop
a relationship with. The very poor street purity cocaine may well
be sold in pubs and on street corners, et cetera, to a more casual
clientele where there is little perceived comeback from it, so
somebody selling a deal of cocaine—"Have you got any
cocaine; here is your tenner or 40 quid" or whatever, see
you goodbye—may never see them again, whereas somebody who
is dealing the high purity would probably have a pretty fixed
list of customers who they very rarely stray beyond and they will
have a reputation for supplying a good quality product.
Q116 Tom Brake: Is there any pattern
of regional variation in terms of levels of purity?
Mr Atha: I could not tell you
that, you would have to ask the Forensic Science Service that.
Q117 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Atha, how effective
do you think the Government's advertising campaign at deterring
people from drug-taking is?
Mr Atha: That is a very good question.
When we looked at the attitudes of drug users to sources of information
the politicians came out pretty much bottom of the list in terms
of credibility of sources, way below doctors, teachers and of
course people's peers. Peers tended to have the highest credibility
rating—as in one's peers not the House of Lords—so
in terms of deterring drug use generally the answer is to make
it uncool, not to make it dangerous because the more dangerous
it is the more risky it is and young people like their risks,
they think they are invincible. One argument I made many years
ago was if you want to stop people using cannabis get Ken Barlow
to smoke it on Coronation Street because he is supposed
to be the most boring person in Britain—whether he is or
not I would not know, I could not comment, but that sort of idea,
trying to make it unfashionable and uncool. In many cases individual
drugs fall in and out of fashion anyway. Alcohol is probably the
big one at the moment and it has very much taken over from cannabis
which was probably the big one five or ten years ago.
Q118 Mr Winnick: You take the same
view, to a large extent at least, as the previous witness, his
organisation Release—at least it is also shown on your website—that
there should be a decriminalisation of drugs? That is the position
your organisation takes.
Mr Atha: I would say the position
of our organisation is that if we annoy those on both sides of
the argument, the pro-reformers and the pro-prohibitionists, then
we are doing our job properly. Our job is to tell it like it is
and not to argue for any particular point of view. If you are
going to make any changes in the law on cocaine and drugs in general
it would be, I suggest, to make available coca leaf, opium and
cannabis as natural products rather than as refined products.
It is like the difference between beer and whisky in terms of
alcohol. Cocaine is a stimulant, it is not inherently any more
dangerous than caffeine for instance, but we all drink caffeine.
We go down to Starbucks and have our cappuccinos and so low purity—the
original Coca-Cola contained cocaine and it was sold without major
problems. Yes, people would start drinking large quantities of
it, but it is very difficult to overdose if you are taking maybe
five to ten milligrams in a bottle and having to drink 100 bottles
to get the effect that some people do from smoking a couple of
rocks of crack. Reducing the purity level of a legitimate product
might be a way forward, but certainly I would not advocate making
cocaine, and especially not crack, generally available without
serious controls on availability.
Q119 Mr Winnick: So cocaine would
not go into the position where you could go into a shop and buy
it, but would I be right in saying that your view would be, like
Release, warn people about the consequences of taking drugs like
people are warned about excessive drinking and smoking, but at
the end of the day leave it to the citizen to decide.
Mr Atha: At the end of the day
the citizen will decide irrespective of the legal position of
the drugs. People are very wedded to what class a particular drug
is in, whether something is illegal or not, and to most users,
if anything, making something illegal tends to increase its attractiveness—if
it is not illegal then it is obviously not worth doing. That is
one sort of mindset. When Blunkett originally announced that cannabis
was going to be downgraded we found that the user ratings actually
went down quite significantly for the first time in years and
last year when it was announced that it would be put back to Class
B the user ratings went up again. When we looked at ketamine and
GHB, when they were made illegal the ratings went up so they became
more attractive to people; when the fruit is forbidden, therefore,
it becomes sweeter. If we take the politics out of it in a wider
sense and have an adult debate about things, it might be more
effective in controlling use than having this adversarial approach
between the individual and society and the Government.
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