Because it was increasingly being used north of the border the Canadians initiated their own studies on marijuana by forming the Commission of Inquiry into NonMedical Use of Drugs. That commission became known as the Le Dain Commission, after its chairman Gerald Le Dain, dean of York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.
In 1972 the Le Dain Commission published a report titled Cannabis. The report largely agreed with the findings of the Shafer Commission report, but it advised keeping the sale of cannabis illegal as a way of discouraging its use. The Canadian government’s laws against cannabis were much softer than those of the U.S., allowing judges to dismiss some cases and charge a fine or assign probation to lesser marijuana charges. Canadian police placed more focus on hard drugs.
There was also cannabis drama happening on the other side of the Atlantic.
On April 7, 1967, England appointed a committee led by Lady Barbara Wootton (also known as Baroness Wootton) to study the marijuana issues in that country. They were also assigned to report on LSD, which was growing in popularity since it had been accidentally discovered in 1943 by chemist Albert Hofmann when he was studying the medicinal uses of a fungus commonly found on grains (This is written about in Hofman’s 1979 book, LSD: my problem child, and in the popular 1954 Aldous Huxley book of essays, The Doors of Perception, which influenced the name of The Doors rock group). The official title was the Sub-Committee on Hallucinogens of the Home Office Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence. A social scientist, Wootton had been a court magistrate, the head of a university department in social work, and governor of the BBC.
As in other countries, marijuana was becoming increasingly popular in England, and so were the number of people being arrested for it. It was no longer viewed as an issue of the lower class. The upper class was becoming well aware that their children were smoking marijuana. It was no secret that cannabis was being smoked by students at Oxford, and that it was being smuggled into the country in many different ways, including through British Naval ships, and by mail delivery to foreign embassies located in London.
It was also no secret that the world-famous musicians that made up The Rolling Stones and the Beatles were quite familiar with cannabis, and this was having an enormous impact on the youth culture. In 1967 there had been well-publicized drug charges against Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Richards was sentenced to a year in prison on cannabis charges and Jagger received three months for possessing some “black bomber” amphetamine pills. This resulted in large protests against the government with thousands of young people marching through London streets.
In May 1967, the Beatles released the psychedelically charged Sergeant Pepper album and it instantly became an enormous success. Some say that it was not only inspired by LSD, but also was meant to be listened to while under the influence of LSD. Stephen Abrams of the Soma Research Association, which was involved in researching THC, has said that Paul McCartney told him to listen to the album while on LSD and wearing headphones. Two clues to the artists’ connection with both LSD and marijuana is that the cover includes marijuana plants as well as an image of Aldous Huxley, the author who famously requested to be on LSD as he died in his California home on November 22, 1963.
On July 16, 1967, there was a huge “be-in” gathering in Hyde Park, which became known as the “Legalize Pot Rally.” Poet Alan Ginsberg had attended the rally and was famously photographed giving a flower to a police officer. It was covered in the international press. Days later the Beatles were in the news again because they had paid for a July 24, 1967, ad in The Times advocating the reform of cannabis laws in England. The ad was sponsored by the Soma Research Association and signed by 65 people, including scientists, doctors, members of Parliament, and Francis Crick, winner of the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA. Publication of the advertisement triggered debate in the House of Commons. The advertisement gained so much attention that on Friday, July 28, 1967 the House of Commons debated the claims it made. Subsequently, on July 31, 1967, Jagger’s sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge and Richards’ conviction was dismissed on appeal.
Under Britain’s 1964 Drugs Prevention and Misuse Act, users of cannabis could receive more severe penalties than users of highly addictive drugs like morphine and heroin. Under the National Health Service, heroin addicts can get prescriptions for the “maintenance dose” of heroin from doctors at specified clinics, which is a proven way of stifling the underground market while treating addiction as a health issue. But Britain’s cannabis users could go straight to prison, and sometimes for as long as those who were convicted of murder. This was recognized as extremely unbalanced, disproportionate to the so-called crime of smoking cannabis, and did harm rather than good. Furthering concern of the upper class was that, as the Wootton Report detailed, in 1964 there were more Caucasians than Blacks arrested in England on cannabis charges.
The Wootton Sub-Committee conducted its study between April 1967 and July 1968. In October 1968, the committee submitted its report to Home Secretary James Callaghan.
In November 1967 John Lennon was tried and received a small fine for breaking the marijuana law. The publicity this received kept the marijuana debate in the news.
The “Wootton Report” was published in January 1969 and was hotly debated in Parliament on January 27. The report concluded that marijuana is “very much less dangerous than the opiates, amphetamines, and barbiturates, and also less dangerous than alcohol.” It also stated, “The long asserted dangers of cannabis were exaggerated, and that the related law was socially damaging, if not unworkable.” And it recommended, “Possession of a small amount should not normally be punished by imprisonment.”
“Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusions reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-1894) and the New York Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana (1944) that ‘the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects.’”
– The Wootton Report, paragraph 29; January 1969
England’s Home Secretary, James Callaghan, again dismissed the report as being influenced by the marijuana “lobby.” In the January 27 debate in Parliament, Callaghan stated, “I think it came as a surprise, if not a shock, to most people when that notorious advertisement appeared in the Times in 1967 to find that there is a lobby for legalising cannabis. The House should recognise that this lobby exists, and my reading of the Report is that the Wootton Sub-Committee was overinfluenced by this lobby.”
Callaghan’s words angered members of the committee. Wootton and the chairman of the committee, Sir Edward Wayne, wrote a letter to the Times that was published on February 5, 1969. In it they defended the “distinguished colleagues” and “eminent medical men” who signed the report.
However, in 1970 Callaghan introduced legislation to adopt the recommendations of the Wootton Report. It was eventually passed as the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. It reduced penalties and did away with prison terms in relation to cannabis. Interestingly, it did not distinguish between suppliers and users.
“Home Secretary James Callaghan has had a dramatic change of mind on drugs. He has decided that people who smoke ‘pot’ should no longer be punished as severely as those using heroin. He has gone further by deciding that the penalties for possessing both hard and soft drugs should be cut.”
– Drug Law Shock, Sunday Mirror, February 1, 1970
On November 19 and 26, 1972, the Sunday Telegraph published articles about the use of marijuana in England. Titled Cannabis on Demand: Britain’s Drug Dilemma, the articles estimated that upwards of two million citizens of England were smoking pot.
In 1973 the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, told magistrates to “reserve the sentence of imprisonment for suitably flagrant cases of large scale trafficking.”
The 1977 Criminal Justice Act reduced the maximum sentence on summary conviction for possession of cannabis to three months, which was one month less than the Wootton Committee advised.