Science Cannabis

What Next? 245of this history can also be found in Abel (1973) Robinson (1996), andBonnie and Whitbread (1974). Public perceptions of the drug owed littleto a dispassionate review of the scientific facts, and much more to thededicated anticannabis crusade of Harry Anslinger and his Federal Bureauof Narcotics, and the popular disapproval of marijuana as a drugassociated with the lower classes and with Mexican immigrants.The Wootton Report, England 1968The widespread consumption of cannabis did not begin in England or inmost West European countries until the 1960s. Attitudes toward the controlof the drug until then were driven largely by events across the Atlanticand by the various international agreements that were put into place,starting with the League of Nations Opium Conference in 1925, whichcategorized cannabis along with opium as a dangerous narcotic, and theWorld Health Organization Single Convention on Narcotic Drugsadopted in 1964, which similarly categorized cannabis as a Schedule Idrug of addiction with no medical uses.It was only when the use of cannabis suddenly expanded in the1960s that the government at the time felt any need to take it moreseriously. The British Home Office, in charge of the regulation of illicitdrugs, established a group of experts known as the Advisory Committeeon Drug Dependence, and an expert subcommittee of this was set up "toreview available evidence on the pharmacological, clinical, pathological,social and legal aspects of these drugs (cannabis and lysergic acid)." Anexperienced sociologist and politician, Baroness Wootton, chaired thesubcommittee. While the subcommittee was deliberating, an advertisementappeared in the London Times on July 24, 1967 asserting that thedangers of cannabis use had been exaggerated and advocating a relaxationof the laws governing its consumption. This provoked a wave ofdebate in the media and in Parliament. The Wooton Report, as the documentsubmitted to the Home Secretary, James Callaghan in 1968 becameknown, made a big impact (Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence,1969). Its conclusions were clear: