Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
TUESDAY 20 OCTOBER 2009
MR STEVE
ROLLES AND
PROFESSOR NEIL
MCKEGANEY
Q140 Bob Russell: I am grateful for
the Professor's thoughtful response. Mr Rolles, can I return to
you? This independent report, which I believe you said has gone
to the Prime Minister—
Mr Rolles: No, it is a call for
an impact assessment; it is a standard tool applied to all new
legislation, but has never been applied to the Misuse of Drugs
Act.
Q141 Bob Russell: So did this impact
assessment have any reference to—
Mr Rolles: No, it has not been
done yet.
Q142 Bob Russell: It has not been
done.
Mr Rolles: No; we are calling
for one to be done.
Q143 Bob Russell: I am pleased to
hear that because I would welcome your thoughts on whether members
of Her Majesty's Armed Forces should be dismissed if they are
found to be taking any type of drug; or does your regime think
that drug taking in Her Majesty's Armed Forces is okay?
Mr Rolles: Would that include
alcohol and tobacco?
Q144 Chairman: I am asking the question—
Mr Rolles: I am asking for clarification.
Q145 Bob Russell: I am asking the
question about illegal drugs.
Mr Rolles: If it is illegal drugs
I do not have any comment on that; it is not in my purview. If
it is in your contract when you take on the job that you cannot
use illegal drugs I think you can be held to that. Whether that
is appropriate or not—
Q146 Chairman: I think Mr Russell
would like an answer—do you feel in your opinion that they
should be dismissed if they are using illegal drugs; yes or no?
Mr Rolles: I do not want to state
an opinion on that; it is not something on which we have a position.
Q147 Bob Russell: I will leave that
one where it is and people will draw their own conclusions. Finally,
are you saying that making cocaine illegal has had no deterrent
effect on the number of users?
Mr Rolles: No. I think there are
a number of different variables which impact on drug taking decisions.
Clearly enforcement policy and punitive sanctions is one of them,
but the evidence would suggest that it is a fairly marginal one
and personal considerations, social and cultural factors, considerations
about health and risk seem to be far more significant. If there
is a deterrent effect it is quite hard to demonstrate. The Home
Office was challenged by this Committee in 2001 on that very question
and produced no evidence at all. They were challenged again in
2006 by the Science & Technology Select Committee specifically
on the question of punitive sanctions and deterrents, and again
produced no evidence but just stated a belief that there was such
a deterrent effect. It is remarkable really; if you think about
it the deterrent effect is absolutely at the very heart of the
whole prohibitionist paradigm and yet the Home Office is unable
to produce a single piece of research to suggest that there is
a significant deterrent effect.
Q148 Tom Brake: Mr Rolles, I just
wanted to ask you if this independent review of the Misuse of
Drugs Act takes place and perhaps comes up with recommendations
which are closer to your line of argument, how would you sell
that to politicians.
Mr Rolles: That it is the right
thing to do; that it would deliver better outcomes than the current
policy. I hope that politicians do not just pander to the tabloids;
that our leaders would show leadership and be encouraged to do
the right thing. Maybe that is a vain hope but if a policy is
clearly failing and someone suggested a policy and suggested it
is going to deliver better outcomes then that is what politicians
and our leaders should do. There is no great mystery about that,
I do not think.
Q149 Gwyn Prosser: Professor, in
your article in the Guardian in September you argued very
strongly against the government becoming the regulator for drugs
and you said that you only had to look at the alcohol industry
and the way that is regulated and the effect that that has on
the streets as a comparison. Do you want to expand on that?
Professor McKeganey: I think the
circumstances in which we find ourselves in relation to alcohol
is one where I think there are good grounds to believe that were
we to have been aware of the likely harm associated with alcohol
that it would not now be a legal drug. It is a legal drug and
I think the government finds itself in a very difficult position
trying to regulate access and consumption of that drug as a result.
We have an escalating alcohol problem, particularly evident in
Scotland but certainly not confined to Scotland, and it seems
to me that if one wanted a model of failure, if you like, you
could find that in relation to the difficulties and inability
to limit the consumption of alcohol given what we know to be the
harm associated with it. So my view is that based on that experience
I would not wish to see that replicated with another set of substances
which may well be even more harmful were they to be used as widely
as alcohol, those being the currently illegal drugs. So I think
there is very little in the experience of alcohol which would
lead one to wish to replicate that in relation to the currently
illegal drugs.
Q150 Gwyn Prosser: Looking ahead,
if such a regime came into place—government regulation as
per alcohol—could we not argue that at least government
would have some sort of control over the levers and they could
increase prices to reduce consumption, although I accept it has
not been a great success with alcohol.
Professor McKeganey: You could
argue that but I do not think very persuasively. I would not wish
to see our government in a price war with the illegal drugs trade
as to who could sell their drugs more cheaply and I think that
is the situation in which we could rapidly find ourselves, where
the currently illegal producers and sellers could always undercut
the price that the government wished to charge because their costs
are lower, and that to me would be a ghastly prospect. I do not
think it would be in any shape or form appropriate for government
to take on that role, even given the economic competition that
it would find itself in.
Mr Rolles: I am not sure that
alcohol is a good example because alcohol is in our view very
poorly regulated and we have been very clear in our calls for
alcohol to be more tightly regulated. We would like to see an
immediate end to alcohol promotions and advertising, sports sponsorship.
We support the calls for minimum pricings per unit and all those
sorts of things. A better example perhaps would be tobacco, which
actually whilst alcohol has been becoming an increasing problem
tobacco use has been falling since the 1970s due to a combination
of effective regulation on price, packaging, access, increasing
age controls, locations of use and environments and so on, combined
with effective public health education about risk. And we have
seen, in the same time that alcohol use and indeed cocaine use
has been rising rapidly, tobacco use falling. On the same continuum
of policy options you can have better regulation of currently
legal drugs and better regulation of currently illegal drugs because
at either end of the spectrum, whether it is complete free markets
re. alcohol or whether it is unregulated markets because criminals
are controlling them, it does not really matter, they are both
totally unregulated and we need to move towards a central optimum
point.
Q151 Chairman: Thank you, Mr Rolles.
In fact minimum pricing was one of the recommendations of this
Committee when we produced our report.
Mr Rolles: Excellent. Excellent
recommendation; well done.
Q152 Chairman: So politicians sometimes
can be very brave and not pander to the tabloids.
Mr Rolles: Not so you would notice!
Q153 Mr Winnick: Professor, you accept
that alcohol is a dangerous substance, certainly if drunk excessively;
you agree with that?
Professor McKeganey: Yes.
Q154 Mr Winnick: And very few would
disagree with that. Are there not lessons to be learned from what
happened in the United States after the First World War, when
prohibition was the policy? It did not succeed very well, did
it? Yes or no?
Professor McKeganey: There are
some questions which I think are inexpertly answered with a yes
or no response. I would be very cautious in drawing inferences
from what happened in relation to alcohol during the prohibition
period and applying those to the present day. The level of alcohol
consumption within the United States during the period of prohibition
was certainly considerably lower than it is presently and indeed
probably would have been at that time had it not been for prohibition;
so I do not necessarily feel that the evidence is overwhelmingly
painting a picture of failure on the part of prohibition. Although,
as I say, I do not feel that experiences in relation to the United
States and their alcohol laws necessarily apply particularly well
to the UK at the present time.
Q155 Mr Winnick: Consumption may
have gone down but there is a relevance between prohibition then
and the argument over drugs prohibition now, even if, Professor,
you do not see it, but while consumption may have gone down in
the United States during prohibition would it not be right to
say that it became a paradise for gangsters—some of course
who became pretty world famous—because it was precisely
the sort of policy that produced such huge profits for them?
Professor McKeganey: I can answer
yes on that. I think that is one of the unfortunate and somewhat
predictable outcomes of our drug laws, in much the same way that
burglary spawns a home security industry which is premised on
the fact that burglars disregard our laws and continue to break
into premises. But I do not think that that actually fundamentally
undermines the fact that we deem burglary to be an illegal act.
Q156 Mr Winnick: I understand and
I respect your point of view; that goes without saying, Professor,
and all of us, whatever views we have, want to see a vast reduction
in the use of drugs—there is no dispute about that—but
it is a question of how we bring that about. But can I put this
question to you? A number of people have argued that if the drug
barons—and we are talking up to date, leaving the United
States aside—of today, the most notorious people, totally
indifferent, as you know, to human suffering and could not care
less as long as they get their profits—if they had a vote
in Parliament on whether they were for or against prohibition,
is it not pretty obvious that they would vote for the continuation
of the present policy?
Professor McKeganey: I agree.
I think that as long as they derive enormous financial gains from
the present set of circumstances they will no doubt be very enthusiastic
supporters of it, up until the point at which they are arrested
and their assets are seized and the consequences of their actions
are brought forcefully to their immediate attention and those
of everyone around them. But up until that point I think that
they will be ardent supporters of restrictive drug rules.
Q157 Mr Winnick: Presumably you would
also agree that the drug barons are very much in favour of the
present policy?
Mr Rolles: Yes. I would not disagree
with Neil on that. What prohibition does is that it does not get
rid of drug use; it just gifts control of the market to criminal
profiteers and we have seen that with alcohol and we have seen
it over the whole of the last century with cocaine and with other
drugs. And when Gordon Brown said, "We will never decriminalise
drugs" you can imagine that all the barons were rubbing their
hands with glee. When prohibition of something collides with huge
demand for it you just create an economic opportunity—it
is simple supply and demands economics—and illegal criminal
entrepreneurs will inevitably exploit the opportunity that it
creates, and it is incredibly destructive; it destabilises entire
countries. I think it is important that we do not focus too much
on cocaine use and we do not lose sight of the issues around the
illegal market and the destructive influence it has on countries
like Mexico where 10,000 people have died in the last three years
in the drug war; in Columbia, civil wars; the terrible effects
in places like Guinea Bissau in West Africa, which is becoming
a transit country. It is incredibly destructive; and we do need
to start debating the alternatives, which I should remind you
is something that the 2002 HASC drug inquiry specifically recommended
that we have a debate on alternatives, including legalisation
and regulation.
Q158 Mr Winnick: I know; I was around
then.
Mr Rolles: And some of you were
on that Committee then.
Q159 Chairman: Mr Winnick remembers
it fondly.
Mr Rolles: So does David Cameron,
interestingly, who supported our recommendations.
Mr Winnick: Yes, he was a member of our
Committee.
Chairman: He is not here today, so let
us not go into that.
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