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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To
be published as HC 468-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
THE WORK OF THE ACMD
Tuesday 23 March 2010
PROFESSOR LES IVERSEN
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 48
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Home Affairs Committee
on Tuesday 9 March 2010
Members present
Keith Vaz, in the Chair
David T C Davies
Mrs Ann Cryer
Mrs Janet Dean
Gwyn Prosser
Bob Russell
Mr David Winnick
________________
Witnesses:
Professor Les Iversen,
Interim Chair, Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, gave evidence.
Q1 Chair:
Indeed.
Professor Iversen, thank you very much for coming to give evidence
today. I am so glad that you have been
able to come in so soon after your appointment as the Interim Chair of the
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
I would like to start with a question about mephedrone and the recent
deaths of Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith.
No doubt you have followed the tragic deaths of these two young people
which took place last week. I understand
that the Advisory Council is currently looking at these issues. Do you first of all have any views about
mephedrone, whether or not it should be legally sold in this country?
Professor Iversen: First, Chair, thank you for
the invitation to speak to you today. Of
course, mephedrone is at the top of everyone's priority list and the deaths of
young people when drugs are implicated is a tragedy. The fact that mephedrone has been implicated
in the deaths of young people is tragic and gives us even more urgency to do
the job that the Advisory Council have been doing since the middle of last
year, I might say. We had a working
party on so-called "legal highs", that is, psychoactive substances available
legally in this country. That has been
operating since the Home Secretary asked us to do this about a year ago. As a consequence, already two groups of such
drugs, the synthetic cannabis derivatives in the product called Spice and the
synthetic benzylpiperazines, which were available legally, have both have been
brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act as of December last year.
Q2 Chair:
Some
might feel that is a very long time when you have the deaths of young
people. This particular drug has been
banned in a number of countries, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Israel;
therefore, those countries regard it as being dangerous, but in our country we
seem to be waiting for a working party.
That is not much comfort for the parents of those who are concerned
about the fact that it is readily available on the internet.
Professor Iversen: The working party had alerted
the rest of the Advisory Council in autumn of last year. As you know, following Professor Nutt's
dismissal and resignations, there was a brief period of hiatus, but by December
the Advisory Council was sufficiently concerned to have written a letter to the
Home Secretary alerting him to the possible dangers of mephedrone and alerting
him to the fact that we were in the process of setting up an evidence-finding
review, which we are still doing.
Q3 Chair:
So if
we get the process right a working party will have been set up in the middle of
last year, almost a year ago?
Professor Iversen: Yes.
Q4 Chair:
You
wrote to the Home Secretary at the end of December.
Professor Iversen: Yes.
Q5 Chair:
Did
you ever get a reply to your letter from the Home Secretary?
Professor Iversen: Yes indeed.
Q6 Chair:
And
what was his reply?
Professor Iversen: Following my appointment as
Interim Chair I had a personal meeting with the Home Secretary on 2 February.
Q7 Chair:
About
this issue?
Professor Iversen: About this and various other
issues but this, of course, was high on his list and my list of
priorities. In February this year we
held an evidence-gathering meeting to which we invited various independent
experts from outside the Advisory Council as well as the Council members and we
had a very useful fact-finding day. We
are now this week going to put a draft report of our recommendations to the
Technology Committee of the Advisory Council which deals with technical medical
harm issues, and we will be in a position, I hope, and again I can only speak
on behalf of the Council; I do not give you my personal opinion ---
Q8 Chair:
Of
course, but you will understand that the parents of Louis Wainwright and
Nicholas Smith, one aged 18 and the other aged 19, would find this a very
bureaucratic response. They would argue,
and some members of this Committee would argue, that this is an unsatisfactory
delay if you have known about these dangers for the last year, if this drug has
been banned in five countries, if it is still readily available. They are waiting for the bureaucracy of
letters going from you to the Home Secretary, of working parties and evidence
sessions taking place when everyone agrees that this drug is very
dangerous. It is being used in Britain at this
moment. It is available on the
internet. There are websites where you
can purchase it. Surely we would expect
more from the Advisory Council and the Government than just waiting for a
report to be concluded?
Professor Iversen: And we have as a policy in
our drugs legislation that we only act when we have gathered together
sufficient scientific medical evidence for a drug's harmfulness, and we are in
the process of doing that here. We do
not have the latitude that some other countries have of placing an immediate
temporary ban on imports, as has been done in some European countries. However, I would say they have done only half
of the job because they have banned particular compounds, such as
mephedrone. If we come to recommend that
these compounds be brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act we shall recommend a
generic scope that will cover all known derivatives of mephedrone, either those
made now or those that could be made in the future, so we will do a more
systematic job than other countries have done so far.
Q9 Chair:
In
your personal view on mephedrone as opposed to the views of the Committee as a
whole do you think that this should be banned straightaway? Obviously, this is a personal view.
Professor Iversen: I am here as Chairman of the
Advisory Council. I am not going to give
you my personal views. I would say,
however, as a personal view, as a pharmacologist these drugs are amphetamines
by another name and I know that amphetamines are harmful, so I think you can
deduce my conclusion from that.
Q10 David
Davies: I think I may have missed something there,
Professor Iversen, but you said that we do not have the latitude of other
countries to bring in an immediate ban.
Why is that exactly?
Professor Iversen: That you will have to ask the
Home Secretary. That is legislation; it
is not my purview.
Q11 David
Davies: But if another country can do it why can we
not just say, "This is dangerous. We are
banning it"?
Q12 Bob
Russell: Professor Iversen, following on from the
Chairman's line of questioning, is it feasible for the Council to conduct
evidence reviews, which necessarily take several months, when it only takes one
high-profile drug-related death, as we have had an example of, for there to be
immediate calls to ban a substance?
Professor Iversen: Yes, but I still have to do
my job of providing an evidence-based case.
I cannot indulge in knee-jerk reflexes to whatever event has happened. Of course it is tragic to have drug-related
deaths, we all feel very deeply for the parents of those children, but I cannot
base the UK's
drug policy on media responses.
Q13 Bob
Russell: Like you, I am making the point without
necessarily agreeing with it, because if I had anything to say all legal drugs
would be banned, but I cannot have that power, so is the Council's considered
advice always going to be overtaken by events in this way or do you think you
can hold the line, as you have indicated?
Professor Iversen: I do not think it has been
overtaken in this case. The Home
Secretary has made it very clear in his statements that he is awaiting advice
from the Advisory Council. The Home
Secretary and the Advisory Council, as you may know, had a joint meeting face-to-face
in November last year in which we agreed on a set of working principles so that
we could operate together with the Home Office rather better than the Advisory
Council had been doing up to that point.
One of the principles was that the Home Secretary of the day would not
pre-judge issues by issuing his decision in advance of any advice received from
the Advisory Council and the present incumbent, Alan Johnson, has adhered very
stringently to that policy, I am glad to say.
Q14 Bob
Russell: So, if I understand you, the Advisory Council
is resolute that it is not going to be steamrollered into making hasty
decisions?
Professor Iversen: Yes, but I also said that we
hoped to be in a position by Monday of next week to make a recommendation to the
Home Secretary. I cannot tell you what
that recommendation is because the Council has not met to make its decision,
but we have a draft report virtually ready.
Q15 Chair:
Lord
Mandelson is not the Home Secretary yet but I hear that he told the BBC on 17
March that the Government was looking at this.
He did not mention the Advisory Council in respect to mephedrone, but he
said the Government would be looking at this very speedily indeed.
Professor Iversen: I cannot comment on what Lord
Mandelson said but -----
Q16 Chair:
Absolutely, but you hope your report will go
to the Home Secretary on Monday?
Professor Iversen: Yes. I report to the Home Secretary and the Home
Secretary has said very clearly on a number of occasions that he is awaiting
our advice before he comes to a decision.
Q17 Chair:
How
long do you think would be a reasonable time to expect a decision?
Professor Iversen: One of our complaints about
the relationship with the Home Office in the past and one of the agreements
that we made with the Home Secretary in November was that when the Advisory
Council made some recommendation the Home Secretary should give it a period of
due consideration. However, in this
instance I think the national priority is such, with drug-related deaths as you
have already said, that we would be flexible about this.
Q18 Mrs
Dean: Could one solution to the problems created by
the continual emergence of new drugs be the introduction of a holding category
in the classification system, which would allow a temporary ban whilst the evidence
on harm is reviewed?
Professor Iversen: I know that Roger Howard of
the UK Drug Policy Commission has said things this week about having a new
category "X" as they describe it, a temporary holding category. This is an issue for the Home Office rather
than the Advisory Council. If asked to
comment or give advice we would be happy to do so but we have not so far been
asked. My personal view is that this is
no solution at all for the current mephedrone/cathinone problem because the category
X has not been sufficiently defined - what it is, how it would work and how it
could be used in this instance. If it
was anything similar to the New Zealand Government's Category D, which was
introduced a few years ago and covered for a short while the benzylpiperazine
legal highs, that amounted to no more than the ban we have on selling alcohol
or tobacco to under-18s and the benzylpiperazines remain legally available to
the adult population. I am afraid with
the internet availability of these drugs nowadays that sort of ban is almost
impossible to enforce. The New Zealand
Government, although it still has a Category D, does not use it any more. I think these are very complex issues. It may
be that some solution of that type could be useful but I do not think it is
going to help us in this instance.
Q19 David
Davies: Professor Iversen, what are relationships like
now between your Council members and the Home Secretary? Have the principles of working set out in
your joint statement in November been adhered to?
Professor Iversen: As I said in a previous
answer, the Home Secretary has adhered very strictly to one of our principal
conditions, which was that the Government should not pre-judge issues by
offering decisions in advance of any advice given; otherwise the advice is
completely superfluous, so I would say that relations at the present time are
very much improved and my relations with the present Home Secretary are good
and I believe that is true for the rest of the Council.
Q20 David
Davies: Would you accept, however, that at the end of
the day the Home Secretary is a representative of the majority of people in
this country and you are experts within a particular field and therefore the
Home Secretary sees the wider picture and has a right to ignore your advice if
he or she wishes to?
Professor Iversen: I absolutely agree. The way I put it is that the Home Secretary
should respect the expertise of the Advisory Council, which, by the way, does
not include just scientists; it has a total of 25 members, most of whom are not
scientists; they are to do with the treatment of drug addiction - nurses,
pharmacists, psychiatrists, psychologists.
We even have a district judge, two policemen and a member of SOCA, so it
is a very broad group which has a great deal of expertise. My principle is that the Government, in the
form of the Home Secretary, should respect that expertise. On the other hand, as an Advisory Council our
job is to advise and we respect the Home Secretary's democratic right to do
whatever he wants with our advice.
Q21 Chair:
Just to
go through the personnel, you are now the acting Chairman for the next 12
months; is that right?
Professor Iversen: Yes.
Q22 Chair:
Are
all the other positions now filled on the Advisory Council?
Professor Iversen: There are a number of
vacancies caused by the resignations last year and by the dismissal of my
predecessor. The recruitment process is
actively under way. I am a member of the
selection council and I can say that the quality of the candidates that we have
seen has been very good indeed and I am confident that we can fill all the
vacancies with very well qualified candidates.
The process is under way and should be partly complete by the time of
the next Council meeting.
Q23 Chair:
The
number of vacancies is how many?
Professor Iversen: It depends on how you define
"vacancy". This is a statutory committee
has to have certain key members.
Q24 Chair:
So
how many members ought it to have when it is all singing and dancing?
Professor Iversen: It is a fluid number because
sometimes you appoint two pharmacists or two chemists if you find two
particularly good candidates.
Q25 Chair:
How
many is the norm?
Professor Iversen: There are five statutory
vacancies and they are in the process of being filled.
Q26 Chair:
Five
out of how many?
Professor Iversen: A total of 25.
Q27 Chair:
So about
a fifth of the Committee are not there?
Professor Iversen: Yes, although I would have to
take guidance as to whether all the 25 are statutory; that is, the Misuse of
Drugs Act 1971 set out -----
Q28 Chair:
Do
you want to take guidance now so that we can get an accurate response?
Professor Iversen: There is a minimum of 20
members, six of whom are statutory positions.
Q29 Chair:
So of
the six statutory positions five are vacant?
Professor Iversen: Sorry; I am getting my
figures wrong. There is a minimum of 20
members, six statutory members. Three
statutory positions are vacant and those are the ones that are being most
urgently considered.
Q30 Chair:
So
about half the statutory members are vacant?
Professor Iversen: Yes.
Q31 Chair:
But
you hope to fill them by when?
Professor Iversen: By the end of this month.
Q32 Chair:
Next
Wednesday?
Professor Iversen: By the time of the Council
meeting, in fact.
Q33 Chair:
The
end of the month is next Wednesday. By
next Wednesday you will be fully up to speed?
Professor Iversen: No. By the time of the Council meeting on Monday
we will be up to speed.
Q34 Chair:
So a
couple of days?
Professor Iversen: Provided we conduct
satisfactory interviews and provided the candidates accept. That is all under way.
Q35 Mr
Winnick: The dismissal of your predecessor was
obviously very controversial, to say the least, and led to resignations of
members of the Council. Professor, when
you took up as the interim or temporary Chairman you were pretty confident, I
assume, otherwise you would not have taken up the position, that your
independence would be fully safeguarded?
Professor Iversen: Yes. By that time we had had our meeting with the
Home Secretary in November, and my decision to accept the interim appointment
was after that event, which I found a very valuable step forward. Of course, I regret David Nutt's dismissal,
he is a good friend of mine and a colleague of long standing and I continue to
have good relations with him, and, as I have said before, any advice that his
independent group can give to the Advisory Council will always be most welcome.
Q36 Mr
Winnick: The dismissal of Professor Nutt, as I said,
was very controversial. Did you yourself
have any views on the subject?
Professor Iversen: I was on the verge of resigning,
along with a number of my colleagues. I
had been on the verge of resigning before David Nutt's dismissal because I saw
the relationship with the Home Office had deteriorated in the ways that I have
already described. I see now a way
forward and I am willing to take on the role because I think the job that the
Advisory Council does is a very important one.
It is important to maintain some continuity in this body and to be able
to recruit some scientific colleagues, I hope, to join me in this role.
Q37 Mr
Winnick: As your integrity has never been and there is
no reason it should ever be questioned, I think, Professor, people would
understand the reasons that you took on this position. Professor Nutt has set up a rival research
group, as we understand it, on drugs harm.
Does this conflict with the work of your organisation?
Professor Iversen: Oh, no. On the contrary, it complements our
activities.
Q38 Mr
Winnick: You are quite happy with what he has done?
Professor Iversen: He has some very excellent scientists
on his group and his group is one of several discussing drug issues in this
country. There is the UK Drug Policy
Commission you have heard from about category X earlier this week, there is the
Beckley Foundation. David's group joins
that series of independent groups which are considering drug issues and we
would be happy to listen to any and all of them at any time if they wish to
come and give evidence to us.
Q39 Mr
Winnick: I say, Professor, for everyone around the table;
my colleagues agree with me, that your integrity can never be questioned for
one moment; neither, of course, can the integrity of Professor Nutt amongst
your group, by your remarks. Is there
any possibility that he could come back onto the body, though not as
Chair? I mean, would you wish him to do
so?
Professor Iversen: I think that is highly
unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Q40 David
Davies: Professor Iversen, again I wonder if you could
clarify something for me. You gave a
strong indication earlier on that you think that mephedrone ought to be
banned. You certainly did not deny that
and my interpretation of your comment that it was an extremely dangerous
substance was that you might be leaning towards that view, and yet you nearly
resigned over Professor Nutt's insistence that we should be looking at
downgrading another drug like marijuana.
Is there not a deep inconsistency here?
You cannot be one minute saying that drugs that have a sexy image in the
press, like cannabis, should be decriminalised and then the next minute,
because people are dying from another drug, be saying that they should all be
banned. Surely the Home Secretary has
got a right to some consistent view. You
either think drugs are bad - well, we all think drugs are bad, but either you
think that generally they should be legalised and dealt with that way or that
they should be banned and dealt with that way.
Professor Iversen: It is a little bit more
complex than that, though, is it not, because our Misuse of Drugs Act created
three different classes of evilness in drugs - A, B and C, and they carry
different criminal penalties, quite significantly different. Part of the Advisory Council's remit is to
advise the Home Secretary not only on whether a particular substance or group
of substances should be banned but also into which class they should fall, and
we have a third job, which is that if a drug that is banned has any medicinal
use it should be scheduled accordingly and either allowed freely or not so
freely to the medical world.
Q41 Mrs
Cryer: Professor Iversen, I am sure you aware that
this Select Committee did quite an in-depth inquiry into the cocaine trade, and
at the same time that our report was published the Government suggested that
your Advisory Council should do a report on the cocaine trade. Do you think you will be using any of the
recommendations that we made?
Professor Iversen: I have just for the first
time had the opportunity to look at your report, which I think is an excellent
piece of work, and, yes, indeed, the Advisory Council will make extensive use,
I am sure, of the material that you have gathered. It is very interesting to see that your group
has come to the same conclusion as ours in suggesting that a review is needed,
namely, that one of the reasons we gave this advice was that we considered that
the perception of cocaine has somehow softened in this country to the extent
that some users now believe it to be a relatively safe drug. I can tell you as a pharmacologist who
studies drugs that work on the brain that this is one of the most addictive
substances known to man, it is certainly not safe and the risk of death from
overdoses is definitely there. The idea
that seems to be gaining ground somehow that powder cocaine is somehow all
right for middle class users and crack cocaine is what the down and out on the
street corner is using is a complete misconception. We are not, I am glad to say, going to
suggest reclassifying cocaine from its present Class A status, but part of our
job, as part of your remit was, is to make information more widely available
about the dangers of this drug. Our
focus, of course, will be on the medical issues and the social harms rather
than the cocaine trade, which you have done a very excellent review of. Yes, we shall be coming to you for advice.
Q42 Gwyn
Prosser: Professor Iversen, the Members of the
Committee who took part in the inquiry into cocaine will be delighted to hear
your last comments. In my view that
issue of perception of cocaine being harmless, socially acceptable and
enjoyable, compared with the reality which you have just described - sudden
death sometimes, brain damage, very addictive - was the crux of everything we
did. I cannot speak for the Committee,
but anything that can be done to highlight the realities of that would be most welcome.
Professor Iversen: Thank you very much. I should say that our review of cocaine has
not even started yet. As you have seen,
we have other priorities on our plate at the moment, but I hope to get that
going by mid-year. As always in these
reviews there will be public sessions, we will bring in outside experts and
will ask for evidence from all quarters.
We will do a very thorough review.
Q43 Chair:
To
end where we started, I have just been passed a note that another woman age 24
was found dead yesterday possibly after taking mephedrone. John
Moores University
in Liverpool is proposing to conduct a number
of experiments on students showing whether or not they have been able to
survive the weekend high of taking this particular drug. What is your view about the use of students
for experimentation of this kind?
Professor Iversen: I am completely unaware of
the experiments you are talking about in Liverpool
so I am not really able to comment.
Q44 Chair:
This
is something the university is doing.
They are asking those who have been out for the weekend who have taken
mephedrone what is the effect that the drug has had on them and then monitoring
them a few days later.
Professor Iversen: I cannot comment.
Q45 Chair:
Maybe
we can pass you the information.
Professor Iversen: If you can give me more
information I would be happy to comment on that.
Q46 Chair:
You
are very clear that by Monday there will be a report on the Home Secretary's
desk about this drug?
Professor Iversen: By Monday afternoon after the
Council has met, yes. Gathering evidence
on mephedrone is actually quite hard because this compound has not been around
in this country for very long. In fact,
it is remarkable how quickly this fashion for taking mephedrone has suddenly
grown. For part of our evidence we have
had to rely on the self-reports of users and those have been collated to some
extent by the Mixmag magazine, which
you may not be familiar with, it is a magazine that is devoted to the dance and
nightclub scene, which undertook a review of quite a respectable size conducted
by an academic from King's College of more than 2,000 young people who
habitually go to these places. Of those
2,000, 41% admitted having taken mephedrone at some stage and one-third
admitted being regular users. Apart from
those numbers, the Mixmag survey also
revealed self-reported harms and we have a fairly big body of self-reported
harms from that type of source so I would not say asking users what their
experience has been is not useful sometimes.
Q47 Chair:
You would
agree it would be a tragedy if there were any more deaths from this drug?
Professor Iversen: To use students as an
experimental model does sound pretty unethical, but I really should not comment
on the Liverpool study.
Q48 Chair:
You
would agree it would be a tragedy if any more young people died during the time
it took for you to get your report together and the Home Secretary's decision?
Professor Iversen: Of course.
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