16 What Shall We Do?

The New Attitude to Drugs

There are several reasons why many people have turned against the traditional recreational drug of alcohol and prefer to use cannabis. , One important reason is that we now live in a society where many different types of drugs are used and accepted. The most typical drug addict in this country is a woman of about fifty who is taking , sleeping pills every night and tranquillizers every day; she would not for a moment think she was anything but normal because many of her friends are doing the same. In a three-year period-forty-three million prescriptions were issued to National Health Service patients for sleeping pills, tranquillizers, slimming pills, anti-depressants and stimulants. Others take regular daily doses of aspirins or other medicines for which a prescription is not needed; most of these are dangerous except when taken in very small quantities. The man who spends pounds a week which he can ill afford on cigarettes which are harmful to his health is seriously addicted.

Drugs are taken by depressed housewives, by businessmen to pep them up at important conferences, by soldiers to put off ex haustion, and by sportsmen of all kinds. It is well known that professional cyclists use amphetamines; similar drugs are used in boxing, football, tennis and rowing. Marksmen and archers use sedatives to steady their hands and rally drivers use stimulants to keep them awake. There is open discussion on TV about the drugs taken by astronauts on a space mission. Children who grow up in this environment are much more likely to turn to drugs to help,. them solve a problem or relax for a few hours.

Another reason for the increase in the use of cannabis is the growth of the misnamed permissive society. There has been a grow-emphasis on the cultivation of aesthetic and mildly hedonistic sensibilities. This is in line with current economic trends. Before long working hours will become shorter and less important. The old puritan ethic which glorified work for its own sake will be less meaningful and leisure activities will become more important
There will then be time to enjoy more than the usual superficial pleasures and special efforts will be made to appreciate good music, art, food and sex. In such an atmosphere the boundaries of permissible pleasure are extended and experimentation is encouraged. The use of cannabis to produce new sensory stimulation is a logical development of this ethic.

The Attitude of the Young

Although it is pbssible to exaggerate the extent to which cannabis is used by young people, the drug is fast becoming part of the teenage mythology. This does not imply that most teenagers smoke it; many do not wish to, but they nevertheless are prepared to defend their friends who do; others have tried it and decided it is not for them, although many of their friends take cannabis. Al-though youth is said to be in revolt against conventional behaviour, there is strong conformism among young people as can be observed by their dress, hair styles, preferences in music. Tolerance towards cannabis is one of the accepted attitudes.

One of the strongest influences on a teenager's behaviour in any sphere is what other teenagers are thinking and doing and the desire to be like them. In the past young people were most influenced by adult groups in close proximity - their family, their neighbours, their workmates. Now the most influential factor is a separate teenage mythology. Aspirations must fit in with this image of the typical teenager, and young people who cannot measure up to the archetype begin to feel either that they are missing something, or that something is missing in them.

In an earlier research (Schofield, 1968) I noted the power of this teenage mythology and the way it influenced sexual behaviour. If the individual regarded himself as part of the youth scene, his attitude to premarital sexual intercourse was much more tolerant. The same situation applies to teenage attitudes to cannabis. Of course attitudes influence behaviour, so pot smoking is much more common among boys and girls who regard themselves as part of the teenage scene.

Young people are very mobile. Not long ago a youth craze was often confined to one area or social class. The teenage mythology is international and classless. So it was inevitable that cannabis would spread quickly from the ports and large urban areas. Today there are many small towns where cannabis coteries have been established.

Young people have always tended to be idealistic and hence anti-materialist; a good job, a nice house and material possessions have only become pressing objectives after getting married and starting a family. The difference today is that the limitations of a predominantly materialist way of life have become clearer, and many young people want more out of life than a routine job, a television and a washing machine. And they really do shudder at leading the same kind of lives as their parents. Some adolescents start drinking so as to be thought grown up like their parents, whereas others take drugs in order to be different from their parents.

But when they revolt against the conventional lives of older generations and proclaim their right to do their own thing, they are not thinking of an anarchic free-for-all. Their own thing is a meditative realization of their own senses and a greater awareness of their inner self. Many of them claim that cannabis helps them to achieve this quasi-religious state, and they can cite historical support for this claim, for the Indian priests have used cannabis to help them in their religious meditations for hundreds of years.

Youthful experiments are part of growing up; young people need the opportunity to stretch their minds as well as their bodies. There must be limits, but they should be as wide as possible. One possible attitude is that it doesn't matter what you do as long as you don't harm others or do yourself a permanent injury.

Certain young people carry their experiments beyond a protest against the life styles of their parents. Their dissent is against the basic structure of the society in which they find themselves and by which they feel trapped. Visible signs are necessary to register their dissent, but the present young generation usually prefers a non-violent form of protest. So they organize demonstrations to uphold unpopular causes and openly defy conventional rules by wearing unusual clothes, by adopting a relaxed attitude to sex, and by taking cannabis.

This is very disturbing for the older generations because it is unlike the traditional sowing of wild oats which is essentially transitory. This is a movement which seeks to have permanent consequences. It is a youthful revolt that we should take seriously. Exasperating thought it may be, it is not an unhealthy phase for the young people concerned, providing they eventually find values and standards that they can accept with some sort of contentment. Nor is it unhealthy for the community which can profit from these new and stimulating elements. The progress of society depends upon the conflict between the youthful activists and the defenders of the status quo. It is possible that our urgent desire to suppress the use of cannabis is confused with our alarm at the way the young challenge our social and political views.

The Ideal Recreational Drug

Of course there is no such thing as an ideal recreational drug at present. Cannabis like every other legal or illegal drug falls far short of the ideal. The pro-pot lobby has tended to oversell the advantages of pot with dreamy descriptions of getting high and self-admiring talk about the lovely people who take it. It is a mistake to claim too much for cannabis, for there are several drawbacks.

Its effects are unpredictable and its action imprecise. For many it does not work at all, and for others its effects are variable. It depends too much upon the mood of the user at the time he takes it. Regular users say it does not help them when they are depressed. An antagonistic person in the cannabis circle can spoil it for others. A few people have had a frightening experience while under the influence of cannabis - nothing like so severe as a bad trip with LSD but unpleasant enough at the time.

The ideal recreational drug would make us feel relaxed and ' happy and act as a social lubricant. It would not give rise to physical or psychological dependence and it would have no undesirable side effects. Soma, the fictional drug in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World gave great pleasure harmlessly. 'One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments,' said the Assistant Predestinator.

You would need a whole range of such drugs, each of which would do exactly what is wanted, to the degree wanted. One drug to stimulate us to action and make us more efficient at work or play; another to calm us down and allow us to feel amiable at, home; another to produce geniality and help us to be cheerful with our friends; and another to send us happily to sleep.

The pharmaceutical revolution in drugs working on the central nervous system may turn this fantasy into a reality within the next decade or so. Knowledge of how the brain works is increasing rapidly and soon a new group of drugs will be discovered that will- influence human sensations and moods by acting on basic cerebral mechanisms.

If a harmless recreational drug were produced tomorrow, would we welcome it, or would we try to ban it? Writers of fiction are not optimistic about the consequences of such a discovery. Soma was given to the citizens of Brave New World to keep them quiet and stifle opposition. In the Space Merchants, a novel by Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, a firm gives away free samples of its latest drink, Coffiest, which contains a safe drug; it is so delici that people become hooked on it and are Coffiest customers for life. In What Shall We Do Till The Analyst Comes, another story by Frederick Pohl, a harmless drug called Cheery-Gum is so re. laxing that people chew it continually and no longer bother to work.

When the ideal recreational drug appears in the real world perhaps it will not be exploited by the Government or commercial interests, but it will probably be forbidden by a zealous Home Secretary of the future. This is because ignorance breeds fear. We have not come to terms with the idea of recreational drugs and so we cannot start to think out our attitudes towards chemical aids to pleasure. Until we have developed a social philosophy, we are
unable to make intelligent judgements about their use and abuse.

A Social Philosophy for Drugs

The only identifiable philosophy at present is a mixture of revulsion, incomprehension, fascination, and a vague feeling that the doctors should tell us which drugs should be legal and which should be outlawed. In fact it is impossible to get any kind of consensus from the medical profession and each doctor vigorously claims the right to prescribe whatever drug he fancies. Yet it is now believed that less than a dozen misguided doctors started the heroin epidemic and most medical men will admit that there is a vast amount of irresponsible over-prescribing of drugs in their profession. In fact it is unreasonable to expect busy family doctors to make decisions about drugs and social policy. In any case the average doctor knows very little about cannabis, for he never prescribes it, and his patients do not ask him to cure them of pot smoking.

As in all kinds of health education, it is always difficult to know how far one should go when trying to stop people from doing something which is harmful. It is particularly difficult when there is a long interval between the act and the injury. If the consequences of smoking tobacco were to be seen in weeks instead of years, it is certain that many more people would give up cigarettes. But even then it would be hard to make out a case in favour of banning all , cigarettes. It undoubtedly helps some people to concentrate and it relieves tension for others. When I gave up smoking, I promptly put on thirty pounds and fat people are much more likely to suffer from hardening of the arteries, blood clots and heart disease — all major causes of death in this country. In any case an attempt to ban cigarettes would fail. Too many people are dependent on tobacco and it has become associated with many other pleasant activities in our daily lives.

We should accept the fact that some people need a chemical crutch to help them through each day. There are morphine addicts who continue to work and there are others leading useful lives although the daily supply of tablets had become an indispensable part of their way of life, just as there are successful alcoholics. Only those who never take tea, coffee or a coke and put no nutmeg in their puddings are in a position to criticize.

A feasible social philosophy for a recreational drug would start by accepting that a minority wants to use it: in a free and tolerant society they should be allowed to do so unless it can be conclusively shown that they will harm themselves or the community: the onus of proof is on those who wish to prohibit the drug altogether: but even though it seems unlikely that there are any long-term unpleasant physical or psychological effects, we cannot always be sure; there may also be unexpected social disadvantages if the drug becomes freely available without further study: for these reasons we do not wish to encourage people to take it, therefore commercial exploitation should be forbidden and public demand should not be artificially stimulated: so the use of a recreational drug must be controlled in some way. The extent of this control is a matter for debate.

The Legal Control of Cannabis

If you cannot accept the social philosophy suggested in the previous paragraph as appropriate for cannabis, the alternatives are:

to make it available immediately without restrictions;
to sell it under license with restrictions on quality, potency and distribution;
to exercise a measure of control by taxation, as we do with alcohol and tobacco;
to control it medically by letting each doctor decide who shall have it and who shall not;
to suppress it with the full force of the law, including stiffer penalties . and increased police activity;
or to leave things as they are.

No doubt this last suggestion will be most popular. Social researchers (Schofield, 1969) have found that there is a strong predisposition in favour of the legal status quo and opposition to almost any change in the law; attitudes to a particular issue are obscured by the sanctity of the law and opposition to reform only - subsides after the law has been changed.

In a country well known for its devotion to traditional ways and its instinctive reluctance to change, there are bound to be other more urgent reforms. It would be hard to make out a convincing case for the early legalization of cannabis when there are other more important things to be done. One cannot say, as one could say about the pressing problem of birth control and the rising world population, that we will all suffer if we do not act quickly. Nevertheless while the law stands as it does, injustices are being done in our name.

The difficulty with the present law on cannabis is that it raises all the problems usually encountered with laws that seek to control private behaviour. In the previous chapter I defined deviance as an element which is not inherent in the behaviour itself, but which is the result of an attitude conferred upon the behaviour. Despite the absence of a victim or damage to the interests of others, behaviour designated as deviant usually attracts legal sanctions. In effect this is moral intervention - an attempt to outlaw immorality. The difficulty is that one man's moral turpitude is another man's innocent pleasure.

Inevitably laws that are concerned with private activities are an interference with our freedom, and they pose a still more serious threat for there is only a slight difference between the control of moral behaviour and thought reform or brain washing. Such laws can only be enforced by resorting to doubtful police methods and by accepting rough justice. Taking a single puff of a joint does not make an individual part of the drug scene, but it does make him liable to arrest and punishment.1

As public opinion cannot be ignored, my own suggestion is an interim change in the law, to be reviewed in three years. I should like to see a more sophisticated law in which the seriousness of the offence would be measured by the quantity found in the incli. vidual's possession. Thus the difference between possession for private use and possession for dealing would be written into the law. Accordingly I suggest:

(1) Possession of up to 30 grams of cannabis should be a sum. mary offence only, punishable on a first or subsequent conviction by a maximum fine of £20.
(2) Possession of any amount larger than 30 grains should be punishable (a) on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding £100 or imprisonment of a term not exceeding four months; (b) on conviction of indictment by an unlimited fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or both.
(3) The procedure on indictment should be subject to the Attorney-General's approval.
(4) The police powers to stop and search without a warrant should be withdrawn.

If these recommendations were adopted, no international treaty would be broken, because the 1961 Single Convention only requires 'imprisonment or other penalties of deprivation of liberty' for 'serious offences'. The first two recommendations would make it more difficult for the supplier of cannabis. The users would wish to buy in amounts of less than 30 grams and so the supplier would have to make more sales. A substantial amount of the smuggling of cannabis is already in small amounts and is not exploited to any significant extent by professional criminals. If this quantitative formula were introduced, dealings in cannabis would become still less attractive to organized crime. The profit to be made on 30 grams of cannabis is not enough to attract big time crooks.

I have suggested that the supplies of cannabis should be mask ' more difficult to obtain, not because I believe in the myth of the Wicked pusher as the framers of the new Government legislation seem to, but because this measure will slow down the spread of cannabis to new users, thereby giving us time to contain the situation until we learn more about it.

Nevertheless it is meant to indicate that the use of cannabis is not a serious offence and for this reason the powers of the police should be strictly limited. In addition to the withdrawal of the police powers of stop and search, I hope other measures will be taken against malpractices brought to light by evidence put before the Deedes sub-committee. Their report was disappointing anr.V.. negative because four members were determined to resist any - change; as they repeatedly stated in committee, the drug problem is so serious that the police should be given maximum powers and should not be restricted. But this is an attitude that needs to bis qualified.

There is not one drug problem, but several, and it is a mistake to - confuse them. Most people would agree a very serious problem is created by those who inject heroin or other drugs intravenously. But the importance of cannabis was under-emphasized in the Deedes report. An analysis of all drug offences has shown that most people are convicted for possessing small amounts of cannabis. There must be some doubt whether such wide police powers are justified for an offence which the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence has recommended should not normally be regarded as a serious crime to be punished by imprisonment'.

Although it is often alleged that it is difficult to consider police powers in relation to cannabis alone, at least the law should ke this distinction, even if it cannot be put into practice on Ivery occasion. No doubt there are times when the police search for one drug and find another. But there are other occasions when the reasonable grounds for suspicion can relate only to the suspected use of cannabis. The distinction between cannabis and more harmful drugs can and should also be made with regard to other laws and administrative regulations (e.g. applications for search warrants, granting bail).

So in effect the use of cannabis in private homes would not be subject to legal interference and consenting adults smoking in private would not be harassed by the police. This may seem to be advocating a contradictory position — it is wrong to legalize canna-bistut right to treat individual cases of pot smoking as relatively trivial offences. The contradiction is unavoidable in the present state of public opinion. Indeed it reflects the contradictions in society itself, with its indifference to the harmfulness of socially accepted drugs like alcohol and tobacco, its deep suspicion of social innovations by the young, and its confusion between the really dangerous drugs and the relatively mild effects of cannabis.

This limited change in the law would provide time for the public to readjust to the new information about cannabis. After having been told for many years that cannabis is an unmitigated social evil, it will be some time before people can forget the misinformation and scare tactics of the past and accept the recent reappraisal of this drug.

Meanwhile much work would have to be done during the three-year interim period. The international organizations would have to be told of our new approach to the problem and attempts made to renegotiate the treaty, for no country should opt out of the international control of narcotics, if this can be avoided.

Everyone agrees that further research on the long-term effects is necessary and this should be started immediately because there must be an inquiry into the social effects, which inevitably takes a long time. Some people talk as if research is a magic wand that will cure all our ills, and politicians sometimes suggest waiting for research results because it puts off the problem for a few more years. But despite the many reports on the pharmacology of cannabis, there has been hardly any social research on the prevalence and effects of regular usage in this country.

No one can forecast the results of this research, but the evidence suggests that, as the years go by, the controls on cannabis will become progressively less strict. Therefore it would be useful to 3.ise this interim period to conduct an exhaustive study of the practical problems of legalization, so as to be ready to meet the difficulties of transition, safeguards, adulteration, standards, distribution and other problemsnoted in chapter 15.

A final task during this interim period would be to take a long look at our legal administrative procedures from the moment a person is arrested for possessing an illegal drug to the time he has served his sentence or paid the penalty. Most people would agree that the law should be concerned with the more dangerous drugs lllce heroin. But it should look less like a vast boot intent on stamping out a social evil, and more like a community net designed to
catch the multiple-drug taker before he sinks too far beyond help. Whatever sanctions it may be necessary to write into the law, there would be much to be gained if the police thought of themselves as an agency primarily concerned with discovering the addict and passing him on to those who can help him.

So What Shall We Do?

The new law, as proposed at present, will not make much difference to the user of cannabis and will solve none of the problems. For those who are not content with the existing unsatisfactory situation, action is required in six areas.

(1) Work towards a more sensible law.
(2) Call for more vigorous research.
(3) Accept that we now live in a drug-orientated society.
(4) Provide better education.
(5) Insist upon the individual's right to choose.
(6) Reduce the emotional impact.

Some people may think that law reform may not be necessary because the police might lose interest in arresting pot smokers if magistrates give out smaller sentences. But a change of opinion does not always precede a reform of the law. Sometimes attitudes await a change in the law. A more tolerant attitude to homosexuality followed after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and the
laws against racial prejudice are justified because they will affect public opinion even though they are difficult to enforce in practice.

As a new generation comes into Parliament there is bound to be a change of attitude and probably a higher proportion of Members will have tried cannabis. In the days when homosexuality was frequently debated in the house, there was always gossip that certain MPs were homosexual; it was impossible to verify these rumours and it was noticeable that those who were alleged to be homosexual were not forward in advocating law reform. Today one hears similar rumours about Members of Parliament who smoke pot; it is just as difficult to verify these rumours and certainly none of them have given any outward sign of support for cannabis law reform.

But as the use of cannabis seems to be spreading throughout all social strata of the population, it is inevitable that more and more politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers and others with influence will be pot smokers. For all these reasons a campaign for a more enlightened law will not be a waste of time.

As people have been saying ever since the publication of the Wootton report, there must be more research, although there is little sign of progress. Perhaps it is a little unfortunate that Professor Paton, the leading critic of pot smoking, is both chairman of the important pharmacological working party of the Medical Research Council and chairman of the projects and publications committee of the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence. Of the five social researches on cannabis known to the Home Office in 1970, three are by doctors who have already published papers describing cannabis as very harmful.

We must face the fact that drugs are now a part of our civilization. It is probably better to do without, if one can, because in the present state of our pharmacological knowledge, there are disadvantages and unpleasant aspects in all the drugs known to man. Ideally we should not take drugs, but such restraint would not be usual or normal. We have to abandon this assumption that an individual ought to be able to do without a recreational drug and that those who take them are immature, degraded, sick or criminal. It is not a question of stamping out all drug taking; such a campaign is doomed to failure now, even if it were ever possible. The question is how far recreational drugs need to be controlled, remembering that the best method of control is social, not legal, so that abstinence from drugs is a measure of character, just as it Is with alcohol and tobacco.

The call for education is as inevitable as the demand for research, especially when dealing with an intractable problem. Education is often a disguised term for propaganda, consisting of a description - of the harmful effects of the drug and the relevant law, in the hope that this will act as an effective deterrent. It is a vain hope because any pot smoker knows far more than the average non-user about - the effects of the drug. But a gradual educational campaign is the only possible method in a free society when new knowledge reveals public ignorance. The general process of discussion and argument is the best method of public enlightenment and, slow though it may be, is the best way towards a balanced solution of a community problem.

Having produced the evidence, as far as we know it, the individual must be allowed to choose for himself, and no one should be very surprised if the choice is not firmly based on logic. As in every health education problem, this really is as far as we should go. It is often possible to find good reasons for restricting a person's freedom to choose so that we can minimize the potential harm he might do to himself. But unless the drawbacks far outweigh the advantages, each person should be free to make the wrong choice. As far as cannabis is concerned, it is up to the prohibitors to supply the damning evidence. Aside from the point that it is always more difficult to demonstrate a negative proposition (e.g. that something is not harmful), those who wish to ban cannabis must produce convincing reasons before we restrict the individual's right to choose.
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Finally there is an urgent need to take some of the emotional steam out of the controversy. This applies to those in favour of pot smoking as well as those who are against it. The cannabis debate has given rise to so much moral indignation that it has begun to assume an exaggerated importance out of all proportion to its true significance.

Unfortunately the relative importance of a social problem depends not upon its disruptive influence, but upon the values attached to it by the people in the community. Sometimes this leads to badly distorted impressions of the social significance of a problem. Thus the problem of witchcraft in the Middle Ages was partly based upon a misjudgement of the power of the witches. Large modern societies consist of a variety of social groups within which a certain kind of behaviour is accepted; whereas the same behaviour would be considered strange outside the group. There are a large number of diverse groups or sub-cultures, each with its own patterns of behaviour and it is likely that almost everyone takes part in some behaviour which other people in the same society would think of as odd or unusual. But it is only when people start to disapprove actively that the behaviour becomes deviant and thus unacceptable.

It is possible that we are making too much of the problem of cannabis. Perhaps things would be better if we worried about it less. It would certainly be true to say that our efforts would be more fruitful if we sought to contain the problem by social controls, instead of trying to eliminate it with heavy legal sanctions.

No doubt this attitude will be attacked because it is too fatalistic. We live in an activist society where people believe that we can do almost anything if we try hard enough. Such an activist attitude is good, for it is the means of curbing previously unchecked diseases, reducing poverty, providing shelter for the homeless, and solving other social problems.

But this solid faith in our achievements sometimes results in an urgent desire to change someone who does not measure up to our expectations. The rights of each individual are more important than the effects of pot.

There is still a very large number of people who do not want to use cannabis, and in the future there will be a vast number who have tried it and decided not to go on using it. It is the sheer passivity of pot that makes it unattractive. There are so many other things to enjoy that sitting around introspectively smoking pot seems dull and empty.

But even if a large proportion of the new generation decide that cannabis is not for them, I believe they will be less upset by the problem and more tolerant towards those who want to use it. This is the attitude that will prevail in the end and, what is more, it is right.

I. It might be said that it requires rather less than a single puff to lead to arrest; when cannabis is found by the police on premises, it has usually been concealed in a hiding place, so that it may easily happen that it does not in truth belong to the person who has been arrested.