8 Reactions to the Wootton Report

Prepublication Rumours

The last paragraphs of the report on cannabis were written in July 1968, but it was not published until January 1969. First it had to be read and discussed by the main committee. After some argument they agreed to endorse the report with a few amendments and an explanatory preface by the Chairman. It then had to be read by three Ministers, printed and published by H MS O. This gave plenty of time for rumours and leaks in the press.

There was an early guess in the Sunday Times in August reporting that the committee had 'run into serious difficulties attempting to find a realistic consensus', although the report had in fact been written by that time. In October several newspapers came out with the fairly predictable guess that the committee would reject the legalization of cannabis. Then on the 27 November the Daily Mail reported three specific recommendations of the committee; two of them turned out to be correct but one was wrong. That evening the Evening Standard gave the same story a full front-page spread, inviting comments from well-known people, as if the report had already been published. The next day all the daily papers reported the news, every one of them repeating the original mistake in the Daily Mail.

The Daily Express had a special article on the centre page as well as the inaccurate report on the news page; 'the most obvious argument against pot,' wrote James Wilkinson in this article, 'is that it leads to pot smokers mixing with hard drug addicts — those addicted to heroin and cocaine. And those who live off the weakness of others.' When the Wootton report was published, this argument was dismissed. The Sun devoted its main leader to comments on these guesses — surely the first time a newspaper has used its leading article to discuss an incorrect report about the unpublished recommendations of a Government committee. It repeated the escalation theory which was later discussed and rejected by the Wootton committee.

Quintin Hogg, the Shadow Home Secretary, talked of the need to 'pursue the addicts of hashish and marihuana with the utmost severity that the law allows'. Earlier at the Conservative Party Conference he had said that he was profoundly shocked' by the irresponsibility of those who wished to change the law. Mr Hogg said: 'I must frankly describe the arguments in favour of an alteration of the law in this respect as casuistic, confused, sophistical and immature. Of course we must make no mistake about this; it is all or nothing. There is no half-way house in this matter. There can be no encouraging the drug up to a point. You either sell it over the counter or in the shops or you prohibit it altogether.'

All this was happening long before the Wootton report was published. The Sunday papers continued with the news story and even weeklies like New Society commented on the original Daily Mail story as if it were a correct summary of the report. The disadvantage of a leak on such a large scale is that the general public really do believe that the report has been published. Not only do they get an inaccurate summary of the recommendations, but when the real report is published, there is a danger that it may be thought of as stale news. In fact even the journalists may be misled, for James Wilkinson in the Daily Express referred to a committee report just out' and the Evening News wrote about the Wootton report on drugs, just released', on the 28 November, forty-two days before the report was published. The effect of these leaks in the newspapers caused the resumption of the public discussion on cannabis, based on ignorance and prejudice, without the facts which the committee was set up to provide and which were the essential part of their report. The editor of a newspaper may think that he has got a marvellous scoop by jumping the gun, but he can hardly claim that his readers benefit from a premature and inaccurate report. And do the millions of readers of other newspapers realize or even care that they have been scooped?

It was also awkward for the Home Secretary and the other Ministers who were considering the report at the time these-leaks occurred. In fact the views of the Home Secretary were also quoted extensively long before the report came out and he is supposed to have said on several occasions that he would require considerable convincing that a change in the existing law was desirable. Most of the papers gave the impression that Mr Callaghan was not likely to approach the Wootton report with an open mind.

With such a long interval between the completion of a report and the day of its publication, it is not difficult for newspapermen to find people who have seen a copy. In this case it is impossible to say where the leak started. The only clues are that all the newspapers repeated the mistake first printed in the Daily Mail. They all reported that the penalty for selling cannabis would be increased whereas the report recommended that it should be reduced. In addition The Times got the news that Peter Brodie, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police who was on the Wootton sub-committee, had dissented from one of the recommendations. In his minority report, Mr Brodie felt that the recommended penalty of two years for selling cannabis was too short.

Rejection

When the report was eventually published on 8 January 1969, most of the papers gave a summary of the report on other pages, but their front-page headlines emphasized its probable rejection by the Home Secretary.

ROW LOOMS ON PLEA FOR POT (Daily Mirror)

STORM OVER POT SMOKERS CHARTER (Daily Express)

CLASH OVER SOFT LINE ON DRUG TAKING (Daily Mail)

The front page of the Daily Express correctly reported the words of the report stating that there was no conclusive evidence that smoking cannabis led to heroin addiction. But the main article on the middle page was headed: THE DEADLY PATH TO 'ADDICTION. The discussion continued throughout the week and into the Sunday papers where the comments ranged from sensible to abusjve. The News of the World front-page report was headed: NOW THE DRUGS FLOOD IN. Their reporter Simon Regan wrote: 'Foreign dealers flew into London the same morning the Wootton report was published. In a matter of hours the capital became one of the easiest places in Europe to buy cannabis in the form of hashish concentrate.' Regan wrote that they 'bought enough hashish to make 500 reefer cigarettes; it does not seem to have occurred to him that he could have done this long before the Wootton report was published. He gives the vendors of cannabis credit for a degree of organization which is quite beyond the capacities of the small operators.

Nearly all the popular daily and Sunday papers came out against the report. Their indignant attitude is summed up by the Daily Mirror editorial: 'In the middle of a growing drug problem in this country a curiously permissive report has dropped on the -desk of the Home Secretary.' The more serious newspapers rehearsed the arguments for and against retaining severe penalties and only the Daily Telegraph was clearly in favour of all the ,Wootton committee's recommendations. The weekly political Journals were equally uncertain. The Spectator thought the 'committee would have done better to have stayed its hand until enough evidence was available to make an intelligent decision as to e. whether or not the smoking of pot should be brought within the law', while New Society felt the committee had been timid because k, it had failed to recommend legalization which was the logical con: elusion from the evidence it had reported.

An emotional attack on the report appeared as an editorial in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet published a long leading article in favour of the recommendations. Elizabeth Tylden, a London psychiatrist, was quoted as saying 'this report is going to cause the loss of young lives', but Dr Dale Cameron of the World Health Organization said that while cannabis should remain illegal, to apply penalties on the scale given to the possession or - use of narcotic drugs defies logic'.

Condemnation by the popular press and uncertainty in the opinion-forming sections of the community gave Mr Callaghan the chance to let it be known that the law relating to cannabis would not be relaxed as long as he was in charge at the Home Office. His immediate reaction appears to have been an attempt to sabotage any prospect of an intelligent and balanced debate on the Wootton committee's proposals. The usual procedure is to allow the report to be published, publicly discussed and eventually subjected to parliamentary debate without prior commitment by the Home Office. But on this occasion both the Home Secretary and his Shadow united in their condemnation of the report long before it was debated in Parliament.

The level of discussion during the debate in the House of Commons was quite surprisingly low.

When I talk to members of my profession and, often enough, to members of the medical profession, I find that, although they cannot always give figures which prove these facts, as has been the case all over the world, this drug is associated in their minds and professional experience with crime, violence and abnormality of one sort or another . . . (Quintin Hogg)

This mania for research that inspires sociologists and arm-chair legislators fills me with misgivings. There is a lot that we do not know about water, but I have a pretty shrewd conviction, at any rate when I am in a boat, that it is wet and better kept out and better not got into. (T. L. Iremonger)

The effects of cannabis are bad. It is all very well for the Hon. Member for Yarmouth to say that they are not bad. The essential of drug taking is that one has to take more and more to have the same effect. (Captain Walter Elliot)

I do not pretend to be an expert on this subject. The whole of our permissive society is so worrying that I would be prepared to leave the law, including the penalties under it, as they are. (Sir Douglas (Ilover)

The most colourful speech of all came from Mr Callaghan. He spoke of calling a halt to the rising tide of permissiveness; he called for more research but ignored the recommendation in the report that would make this research possible; he seemed to think the committee had recommended the legalization of cannabis (' My mind boggles about the thought of licensing the sale of cannabis by the local tobacconist, off licence, or whatever it may be,'); and he devoted more than half his speech to drugs with which the report was not concerned.

Most surprising of all, he said:

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 in favour of legalizing cannabis. The house should recognize that this lobby exists, and my reading of the report is that the Wootton sub-committee was over influenced by this lobby. I had the impression . . . that those who were in favour of legalizing pot were all the time pushing the other members of the committee back, so that eventually these remarkable conclusions emerged that it would be wrong to legalize it but that the penalties should be reduced.

In a letter to The Times, the Chairman of the Government Committee on Drugs and Lady Wootton wrote that Mr Callaghan's statement was offensive to our distinguished colleagues and ourselves'.

There was no doubt that the Home Secretary's treatment of the committee was discourteous and his remarks could hardly have been more insulting. In fact it was Mr Callaghan who had made up his mind before he had seen the report. If members of Government committees are going to be accused of being 'over influenced' and of being 'pushed back all the time', the others, by inference, are being accused of pushing back their fellows and resorting to doubtful tactics. Responsible members of the community can only be discouraged by the Home Secretary's unpleasant remarks from voluntarily sacrificing their valuable time to serve unpaid on these committees. In the words of an editorial in the Guardian: 'The Wootton committee produced a careful, authoritative report. It deserves better than the boorish brush-off it has received from the Home Secretary.'

But when all this has been said, there is no doubt that the public approved of the rejection of the Wootton report. Every public-opinion poll before and after the report was published has reaffirmed its belief that the severe penalties for the possession of cannabis are necessary. The Sun reported that 'Labour and Tory M Ps cheered Mr Callaghan when he announced that the cannabis penalties would not be altered'. Only two Members of Parliament had a good word to say for the report. A later debate in the House of Lords was more sensible and responsible, but even here few of the peers were prepared to accept the main recommendations of the committee.

It is obvious that the Wootton report is quite unacceptable to the general public. It is not easy to understand why the subject of cannabis arouses such fears. It is equally difficult to explain how the twelve members of the committee could possibly come up with such an unacceptable result. None of them were young enough to represent the under thirties. The committee was chosen by the previous Home Secretary and included a distinguished social scientist as its chairman, the Emeritus professor of psychiatry at London University, the Tory founder and ex-editor of New Society, several eminent medical men with experience of treating drug users, a metropolitan stipendiary magistrate and a very senior police officer.

It is possible that a description of the workings of this committee from the inside may help to explain public attitudes to cannabis. I attended every meeting except one, and I will attempt to explain how the committee reached its conclusions although obviously I cannot name names or give away official secrets.

Inside the Sub-Committee

The sub-committee on cannabis under the chairmanship of Lady Wootton was appointed in April 1967. At the first meeting a month later there was some discussion about when we would be ready to report to the main committee. The general feeling was that we should be able to compile and write our report in time for a meeting of the main committee in October of that year. But it took us seventeen meetings and fifteen months before we could agree on a final report.

At that first meeting I asked if we could initiate some original research to supply information in some of the areas where this was not available. Another member of the committee felt that this was not necessary and all we had to do was work out ways to stop the spread of this filthy habit'. It is incredible to look back at the hard and unsympathetic remarks made by several members of the committee at that first meeting and then to compare the reaction of the press when the report came out and see the members described as 'softies' and `left-wing'.

At those early meetings there were six who wanted to take a tough line, four who were undecided, and two who felt the law against the possession of cannabis was too severe. After three meetings there seemed to be absolutely no common ground, but after ten meetings both sides had learnt from each other and were moving closer together. It was an interesting and rewarding experience to see the shift of opinion as the evidence was produced, sifted and studied.

As the weeks went by members read through the mass of material about cannabis. The secretariat must have sent us several million words to read. In addition there was written and oral evidence. Sixteen witnesses appeared before the committee ranging from pillars of the medical establishment to representatives of the pro-pot lobby. I was surprised by the ease with which most of them made assertions unembarrassed by the small amount of evidence to support their claims. On one occasion a witness revealed such ignorance on the subject that members of the committee were embarrassed. But on another occasion I tried to draw out a witness to give his views, but he was so incensed by the attitude of the committee that he decided to say as little as possible. One of the witnesses felt it was our duty to show how this evil could be stamped out, and another felt that we could not write a report on pot until we had all tried it at least once.! had some sympathy with the last view, but the enjoyment of cannabis is an acquired skill and I do not think any member of the committee had the opportunity to spend much time studying the effects of the drug at first hand.

Although the literature on cannabis is vast and the opinions of witnelses were numerous, it was difficult to get the necessary relevant information. When we asked for special material, it was sometimes found to be unavailable. The police were asked to
supply a list of crimes in which cannabis had been a precipitating factor; a few weeks later a long list was produced from New Scotland Yard, but a study of the details of each of these crimes, revealed that heroin, cocaine and usually amphetaminss had been taken by the offenders, but none of them had used cannabis. That was in the days when one drug was much like another as far as the police were concerned.

In between meetings I and other members spent many hours studying the problem, not only reading all the material we could find, but going out of our way to talk to people in touch with the drug scene. In my case earlier researches gave me the opportunity to meet young people and obtain their views.! knew several people who smoked cannabis and I discussed the problem with them for hours on end.

A few members of the committee did not have time to study the subject in such depth. At some meetings it was obvious that one or two members had not read the relevant papers; sometimes they were to be seen reading a long report as others discussed it. But this was exceptional. For the most part members who had only a superficial knowledge of the subject when we first met became very well informed as the months went by.

A few officials from the Home Office worked full time with the committee and others from the Department of Health and the Scottish Home and Health Office attended all the meetings. These officials did not take a large part in the discussions (unlike the search and arrest sub-committee where the officials outnumbered' and outspoke the members), but the chairman wisely brought them into the discussion when it was clear that their contributions would be useful.

Although they did not speak much, their influence was great because their job was to summarize and write up the discussion ready for the next meeting. When the discussions were long and rambling, it was often impossible to avoid bias when putting together the members' views in a form suitable for the official minutes. Perhaps it was not part of their job to avoid bias, for they were more aware than the committee members of what the Minister and senior officials would accept.

The quality of the officials' work was mixed. The earlier drafts of the report were abysmal. One official yawned so much at meetings that he made everyone else there feel sleepy. But for most of the time I was very impressed by the calibre to be found in the higher ranks of the civil service. Many of them had sharp quick minds. One of them, not mentioned in the obligatory paragraph of appreciation at the end of a Government report, clearly had a first-class analytical brain and gave invaluable assistance to the committee in the last vital stages of redrafting. Contrary to the usual image of civil servants, two members of the drugs branch at the Home Office were well known in the drug scene for their understanding and sympathy, and were able to win the friendship and trust of drug users despite their official position.

I had not previously had much experience of committee work, whereas others had and knew how to influence members to maximum effect. I would get exasperated and sometimes let my colleagues see it. One member was opinionated and dogmatic, and probably had little influence on the others. Another was well informed and argued cogently, but spoke too often so that other members got tired of his frequent interventions and took less notice of what he said. The rare interventions of another were always a valued contribution and impressed everyone. The most experienced committee worker was Lady Wootton who was also Madam Chairman. This put her in a position of great influence, but at every meeting she made sure that every point of view was heard. In certain paragraphs of the report her imprint is clear, but it is not true that she dominated the committee from the start. Indeed her own views changed and developed throughout the seventeen meetings, as did all of ours.

From the tenth meeting onwards we had all come to accept that cannabis was not at all like the other recreational drugs and required special consideration. In the debate in the House of Commons after the report was published, the Home Secretary criticized this point of view. He said that 'it was wrong of the committee to take one drug, look at it in isolation from the whole complex and background, and bring forward recommendations in the way it did'. But the Government Advisory Committee was given the task of reviewing the regulations covering all the recreational drugs. Unless we were to assume that there is no difference between one drug and another, it is hard ta see" how we could have proceeded unless we examined the particular regulations governing each specific drug. But in the cannabis report we did devote a whole section of ten paragraphs comparing cannabis with the other drugs.

By the thirteenth meeting we had arrived at our central conclusion, that it was inappropriate to bracket cannabis with lethal drugs, such as heroin, in the Dangerous Drugs Act. It became clear that the whole logic of our report demanded that there must be separate penalties for possessing cannabis. One member suggested that the difference could be shown by increasing the penalties for possessing heroin, but everyone else felt the penalties for possessing cannabis should be reduced. But by how much? The discussion was beginning to seem more like a heated argument when the Chairman intervened and told us that if we were ever going to get a reasonable report, everyone must be prepared to make some kind of compromise. This seemed to me to be a very proper intervention because we were getting near the stage where any attempt to reconcile opposing views would involve a loss of face.

Eventually eight agreed to the penalties as later published; two felt they were not severe enough, and two more felt they were too severe. After more discussion, both of the so-called hard liners were persuaded to go in with the majority. One of the so-called softies agreed with me and still felt the penalties were too high, but he also felt that unanimity was even more important. He talked to me privately and produced strong historical evidence to show that minority reports rarely had any influence and the impact of reports which were not unanimous were often seriously weakened. I was impressed by this argument and reluctantly agreed to a compromise which would in effect have altered the seventh recommendation so that there was no imprisonment for a summary conviction. But the other ten would not agree to this, stressing the value of a four-month sentence because this would allow the defendant to opt for trial by jury — a civil liberty most of us would be prepared to sacrifice if it meant risking a prison sentence. My ally felt that unanimity was more important and so I was left on my own.

Some people make a virtue out of obstinacy ('As I always say . . .') and are proud that their views never change. I had been most impressed by the way other members had considered the evidence and allowed themselves to be persuaded. The fact that eleven members of the committee with such diverse views at the beginning had now managed to reach agreement was much to their credit. I was not proud that I was the only one who had failed to come all the way to agreement. This was the first important committee to which I had been appointed and I felt that my inability to compromise indicated a lack of understanding and tolerance. Very few of the newspapers mentioned my reservations and it seems probable that they will have no effect for good or evil.

It was not the heavier penalties suggested by the majority of my Colleagues that persuaded me to stick to my guns. The other members believed that the publication of the report would influence the behaviour of the police and the discretion of the judiciary. In fact they have been proved wrong because the rejection of the report by the Home Secretary has prevented it from having this effect. Young people are still being given prison sentences for having small amounts of cannabis in their possession. In my reservation I wrote:

Nothing emphasizes the generation gap more than a drug offence. The drug user and the magistrate are basically out of sympathy. The cannabis user is partaking in a form of enjoyment — that is how he looks at it — which was unknown to the magistrate when he was young. In addition to this the clothes, hair style and attitudes of many young drug takers are unlikely to please the magistrate. Even if we adults feel inclined to put our trust in the magistrate's ability to understand these differences in the generations, it is quite certain that most of the young people of this country do not believe this wide gap can be bridged except by a very few. Why should they have to take their chance whether they get an informed and understanding magistrate or not? The administration of the law should not be a matter of luck.

Consequently I argued for a more sophisticated law in which the seriousness of an offence is measured by the quantity in the offender's possession. If the offender has 30 grams or less in his possession, it should be considered a minor offence. Possession of larger amounts should rate higher penalties. I also felt that the blanket police powers to search anyone on the least suspicion were too far reaching; it may be possible to justify them for use against the more dangerous drugs, but not against cannabis which, the committee reported, is not harmful when taken in moderation.

As things turned out I was not to be the only dissenter. At practically the last meeting Peter Brodie, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, said that he felt that the big-scale trafficker would not be deterred by a large fine and the threat of two years' imprisonment. He proposed a five-year sentence in addition to an unlimited fine. This earned him a pat on the back from the many people who feel that the only solution to the drug problem is to stamp it out. Most of these people failed to notice that even Mr Brodie's recommendation was a considerable reduction in severity, from ten years, as the law was, to five. But the Home Secretary decided to increase the maximum penalty to fourteen years instead of reducing it by half as suggested by one of his senior policemen.

I have told the story of the way views were formulated inside the Wootton committee because it helps to explain why these people produced a report so unsympathetic to most readers. First of all, one must accept that the inevitable result must be a compromise when people with such very different backgrounds attempt to reach a conclusion. This is unsatisfactory in some ways, but not insensitive. Some people said that if there is not enough evidence, as the report admits, then it is illogical to recommend a change in the law. It may be illogical, but it is humane. It really does not make sense to send someone to prison for possessing a drug which is a mild intoxicant.

Others have said that it was a pity that Lady Wootton and her colleagues did not have the courage of their own arguments and recommend the legalization of cannabis. Despite the disappointment of the law reformers and the complete rejection by the general public, it is fair to say that the report was a rational reflection of the available evidence. Furthermore it was very nearly unanimous.

Mr Brodie only objected to one paragraph. I agreed with 92 of the 102 paragraphs. Such compromises as there were tended to be on language rather than basic principles. For example, in paragraph 70, some of us wanted to state clearly that cannabis psychosis, if it occurred at all, must be exceedingly rare in Western countries. Eventually we agreed on: 'Psychosis or psychological dependence, it is true, do not seem to be frequent consequences of cannabis smoking.' The committee often preferred the safety of a negative sentence when I felt a clear statement was required. I was particularly keen that misunderstandings about escalation to heroin should be clearly and finally resolved. Unfortunately the paragraphs in the report on escalation (48-51) do not seem to have had this effect.

The real conclusion about the Wootton report is that it would have been impossible to come to any other conclusion. I am quite sure that if the same evidence had been put before an equally varied group of citizens, they would have made similar recommendations if they had been allowed to study the subject long enough to overcome their unsympathetic attitudes to the use of any recreational drug.

This is the crux of the matter. The literature on cannabis is lengthy and confusing. Much of it is irrelevant; some of it is misleading; some of it is so interwoven with moral prejudices that true objectivity is lost. Until one has had time to go through this, sifting and sorting the valid information from the personal bias, it is inevitable that one will be misled by the prevailing myths. And yet the extraordinary thing is that nearly all those who have had the chance to go through the literature in detail have come to the same conclusions. This is true of two recent commissions in the United States (1962, 1967), of the Canadian Commission of In- quiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (1970), and of the many individuals who, like myself, do not use cannabis and have no particular axe to grind.