Cannabis and the law: the narrow escape Ronald Butt In 1968, that radical ladv, the Baroness Wootton of Abinger, chaired an official committee which recommended blandly, and, of course, rationally, that the penalties for caninabis smok- ing should be reduced. Natur- ally, it did not, suggest that cannabis should be legalized: such a proposition would have instantly sunk without trace. But using the techniques of argument with which we have grown familiar from those anxious to engineer social change. it created a basis for its arguments by reference to evidence that increasing num- bers of young people were 'experimenting " with the drug, and using it for " social pleasure " and that it might, become a " functional equiva- lent of alcohol". The usual methods of de- fusing concern were manifest: there was "no evidence" that it caused "violent crime" or anti-social behaviour. qr pro- duced "in otherwise normal people " dependence or psycho. sis requiring medical treatment. The Report ignored the fact that there was no evidence that cannabis did not do these things: It blandly observed that the " therapeutic use of cannabis . . . also deserves further in- vestigation ", a thought thai recalled the medicinal and therapeutic claims made for tobacco when it first reached England and which King James I so sensibly ridiculed. But, of course, JTames could not use legal sanctions and so, today, much as Mr Ennals may weep for it, tobacco tax brings the Treasury an annual revenue of ?1.790m. Too little was known about cannabis and there *vere- too many imponderables for its use to be unrestricted, the Wootton Committee decided. On the other hand, the whlole tenor of the report was to reduce the effectiveness of the restrictions in a maulner that seemed bo'und both to encourage the Dractice oF pot-smoking and lead gradually towards dismantling legal restrictions altogether. The report was described by a consultant psychiatrist as a ' junkies charter " on the gi-ounds that the drug pedlars drew comfort from any propo- sal to relax the present law, ajnd because the first drug taken by heroin addicts was usually found to have been cannabis. The Home Secretary at the time was Mr James Callaglhan. His reaction to thle Wootton report was instantaneous and forthright, in a manner to i/hich we ate too little accus- tomed from our politicians in their anxiety not to offend what they think may be the trend. Mr Callaghan turned it down unambiguously. "To reduce the penalties for possession, sale or supplv of cannabis wvould be bound to. lead people to think that the Govern- itent take a less serious view of the effects of drug taking. ThIs.is not so", he said.. He also added .in a devastat- irog destruction of the false conipariso s that were beiig made: "Becakuse we have a number of socWll evils in this country at presedi, it would be sheer masochism- to add to our evils bjy legislation to make it more easy for people to intro- duce another one." When the House of Commons debated rhe report, Mr Calla- gghan was even more blunt. " My reading of the report is that the Wootton sub-committee *was over-influenced by this lobby (to legalize cannabis) ", he said. " I had the impression that those who were in favour of legalizing pot were all the time pushing the other members of the com- mittee back-. . ." That made Lady Wootton and Sir Edwvard Wayne, chairman of the standing committee on dr-ug dependence of wvhich the Wootton inquiry was a sub- committee, very angry, and they wrote to The Times about it. They said they had not advo- cated legalizing pot, which was true but not much to the point, and that they were not influ- enced by the "Jobby", though I am bound to say that if no one had argued for removing the restrictions on cannabis, it is difficult to believe that there would have been any question of reducing the penalties. Eight years later, 'we have cause to be profoundly grateful to Mr Callaghan for this deci- sion, which must have been rather harder to take in the climate of those days when what is so foolishly called the per- missive society was ir its first bloom, and its rotten fruit was not yet so thick on the ground. I am not sure whether another Home Se.cretary would have made the same decision. Would Mr Roy Jenkins have tu-ned dbwn the Wootton Re- port with such candour and brusqueness, or would he have perblaps gone some of the way w%ith it as a means of taking us a littlee way farther along his road to a liberal and civilized society ? We shall never know but we have a priori grounds for thanking Mr Callaghan, since we can draw certain con- clusions from his not having given way to the trend in 1969 -and it is wbrth examining these in a week when we learn, as was reported in The Tines on Monday, that there are some (tthey are apparently to be found even-in-the Home Office) who contemplate the possibility of using a technical flaw in the existing legislation to liberalize the law on cannabis smoking. In the last few years, quite suddenly, cannabis smoking in schools, and also in universi- ties, which at the end of the sixties threatened to become an unstoppable fashion and habit, has diminished to compara- tively small proportions. It is true that alcohol has since become, correspondingly a greater danger in schools, particularly the consumption of spirits now that these are more easily available (and should they continue to lhe ?) through the supermarkets. But two things have to be said about this. The first is that at least we are clearer about the effects of alcohol, and the second is that the existence of one prob- lein gives no cause to create another, and a worse one. There is now knowledge that did not exist with certainty in 1969 that cannabis is addictive, and creates physical depend- ence and withdrawal symptoms. More, the United States Nat- ional Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, are now reported to have found that the drug is more dangerous than high-tar cigarettes in reducing the human system's immune re- sponse to viruses and bacteria, in damaging the lungs and even in causing abnormalities in un- born children. It cannot be proved categori- cally that Mr Callaghan's deci- sion in turning down Wootton was responsible for our escap- ing these dangers from a grow- ing cannabis fashion in schools, universities and elsewhere. But the consequences of other legal changes in the social field give grounds for believing that this was so. lf. foi instance, the "social causes " clause had not been in- serted into the 1967 Abortion A:ct, can anvone believe that the abortion n.umbers would lhave reached the present level ? I certainly cannot. The exist- ence of the Act has both con- ditioned behaviour and created a demand. Similarly, if the laws that previously prevenited the pusb. ing of pornography had not in one way and another been dis- mantled, is it conceivable that this would now be a business worth millions for which we are paying a price in the rise of violent sexual crime? Further, if by a magic time- machine, we could have seen ahead to the consequences of these legal changes before they were adopted, woidd Parliament have accepted Mr Steel's "social causes" clause or, for instance, the "public good" loophole for obscene publica- tions ? I don't believe it. Parliament accepted these things because it was assured at the time that they would not have the effects they did have, iust as Parliament was assured by the suppdrters* of the Wootton, Repor t this wo.uld have no malign consequences and that it was only common sense to treat cannabis differently from other drugs. The movement to nibble at the law in aid of cannabis seems to be afoot again. As a result of a legal technicality, which raises a question about the legality or otherwise of cannabis stalk and leaf as dis- tinct from cannabis flower, the existing law is going to be looked at when an a~ipeal that is pending is over. To some this is a golden opportunity to move a little towards liberalization: back, in other words, to Wootton. As long as Mr Callaghan is Prime Minister, there is not the slightest possibility that the present situation can be exploited in this way, and the Home Secretary, M1 Rees, is generally of the Prime Mini- ster's way of thinking. Yet the episode is an instructive one. It reminds us of what we have escaped and also of the need for vigilance against the never- resting and subtle incursions of the professional " progressives against the real public will. It does not disconcert me that the law should be used to protect society, where a law can be enforced because it has paiblic support. The progressive gibe about the " nanny state" is plain silly: the law has a moral as well as a convenience content in restraining ci-imes. Lord Denning and Lord Justice Scarman recently agreed in a radio discussion that "morality is the foundation of the law "-the izus gentiumn. So it is. Not all morality is enshrined in law but all law ought to strive for a moral basis. Cannabis and the law:. the narrow escape