David Bailey
(1938)
British photographer
The Daily Telegraph Friday 31 Mar 2000 - Colin Randall
THIRTY-THREE years on, the names that helped fill the
remarkable full-page advertisement in The Times - calling
for private use of cannabis to be treated at worst as a
misdemeanour - present a striking roster of Sixties opinion-
formers.
Radicals from the arts, politics and medicine had
enthusiastically thrown their weight behind the notion of
clearing the jails of those imprisoned for possession of the
drug or for permitting its use on their premises.
Respectability rubbed shoulders with the Swinging Sixties.
There were Jonathan Aitken, who was then respectable, and
the political agitator Tariq Ali, who was not. All four
Beatles signed, each taking care to mention his MBE. The
list bristled with important personalities: David Bailey,
Graham Greene, David Hockney, George Melly, David Dimbleby,
Jonathan Miller, Kenneth Tynan.
To a Guardian columnist, writing as recently as last August,
the support of public figures for decriminalisation of
cannabis has developed from that Times ad into an "old and
enjoyable summer ritual" as predictable as a hippy invasion
of Stonehenge on Midsummer's Eve, or an English cricket
defeat.
In fact, as a chronology published by the Campaign to
Legalise Cannabis International Association (CLCIA) shows,
signatories to The Times did little more than maintain a
trend dating from 2737BC. In that year, according to the
CLCIA's earliest reference, the drug is described as a
superior herb in "the world's first medical text, or
pharmacopoeia, Shen Yung's Pen Ts'ao, in China".
For the CLCIA, the history of campaigning can be reduced to
catchy footnotes. Hence, in 1500BC, "cannabis-smoking
Scythians sweep through Europe and Asia, settling and
inventing the scythe"; a thousand years later, a number of
African and Asian religions "adopt cannabis"; later still,
the Roman Emperor Nero's surgeon, Dioscorides, is to be
found praising the drug "for making the stoutest cords and
for its medicinal properties".
Between then and the first quarter of the 20th century, the
drug moved through long spells of unqualified acceptability
- Elizabeth I and George Washington positively encouraged
its cultivation - to an era of gathering hostility. This
culminated, in Britain, with the Dangerous Drugs Act finally
outlawing cannabis in 1928. But defenders of the drug were
undeterred.
The year of The Times ad was also the year of dramatic
events in the history of pro-cannabis agitation. Some 3,000
people staged a "smoke-in" in Hyde Park; Mick Jagger and his
Rolling Stones colleague Keith Richards were jailed on drug
charges, though they were quickly freed and their
convictions quashed. Public mood seemed to be turning. But
the Labour Government flatly rejected Lady Wootton's report,
which declared that the dangers of moderate use of cannabis
had been exaggerated and urging reduced penalties for small-
scale possession.
In 1976, President Ford banned medical research on cannabis;
in the Nineties, Michael Howard, then Tory Home Secretary,
twice raised penalties for its use. But the voices
identified by the whimsical Guardian columnist have insisted
on being heard. Rosie Boycott's short reign as editor of The
Independent is remembered chiefly for her "legalise
cannabis" campaign. More than 100 celebrities and academics
supported her.
In parts of the world, involvement with cannabis still
carries the risk of draconian consequences. In America, a
court condemned Elaine Prince-Patron, an English grandmother
and resident of Arizona, to life imprisonment, with no
parole for 25 years, after she was caught with 80lb of a
cannabis-related plant.
In Britain, big-time traffickers also attract heavy
sentences. But while attitudes vary around the country,
there is growing evidence of greater tolerance by the police
and the courts of those involved in modest use or even
distribution.
A son of Lord Steel, the former Liberal leader, was jailed
for nine months for growing cannabis. But Jack Straw's
17-year-old son escaped with a caution after selling the
drug to an undercover tabloid reporter. Individuals using
the drug for the relief of pain or stress are still pursued
in the courts, but are generally treated with sympathy.
Alun Buffry, nominating officer of the Norfolk-based
Legalise Cannabis Alliance, which supports single-issue
candidates at local and national elections, said: "I think
as far as the general public is concerned, we are more of
less halfway there. But major obstacles remain in
Government, particularly with Jack Straw and Tony Blair."
Mr Buffry, 50, an occasional user of the drug since university days in the late Sixties, said the signatories to
The Times advertisement were pioneers in the sense of
promoting decriminalisation. But he questioned the extent of
their historical influence. 'After all," he said, "sentences
are higher now than they were in the Seventies."
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