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The Wootton Report on cannabis (dated 1968 and published in January 1969) was compiled by the Sub-committee on Hallucinogens of the United Kingdom Home Office Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence. The sub-committee was chaired by Baroness Wootton of Abinger. [1] Originally intended to be a report on both cannabis and LSD, the panel members decided to limit their report to cannabis.
The second paragraph of the Report reads:
"Our first enquiries were proceeding — without publicity — into the pharmacological and medical aspects, when other developments gave our study new and increased significance. An advertisement in The Times on 24th July, 1967 represented that the long-asserted dangers of cannabis were exaggerated and that the related law was socially damaging, if not unworkable. This was followed by a wave of debate about these issues in Parliament, the Press and elsewhere, and reports of enquiries, e.g. by the National Council for Civil Liberties. This publicity made more explicit the nature of some current ‘protest’ about official policy on drugs; defined more clearly some of the main issues in our study; and led us to give greater attention to the legal aspects of the problem. Government spokesmen made it clear that any future development of policy on cannabis would have to take account of the Advisory Committee’s Report. Accordingly, we decided to give first priority to presenting our views on cannabis."
The Report seemed to give cannabis something resembling a clean bill of health. It said:
"The long term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects (…) Cannabis is less dangerous than the opiates, amphetamines and barbiturates, and also less dangerous than alcohol. (…) An increasing number of people, mainly young, in all classes of society are experimenting with this drug, and substantial numbers use it regularly for social pleasure. There is no evidence that this activity is causing violent crime, or is producing in otherwise normal people conditions of dependence or psychosis requiring medical treatment (…) there are indications that (cannabis) may become a functional equivalent of alcohol."
The Advisory Committee appeared also to accept the principle of decriminalisation. The main proposal in the report was that "possession of a small amount of cannabis should not normally be regarded as a serious crime to be punished by imprisonment". The accompanying letter of submission to the Home Secretary said: "The committee is generally of the view that imprisonment is no longer an appropriate punishment for those who are unlawfully in possession of a small amount".
The Home Secretary at the time, James Callaghan, suggested he would reject the report. He told Parliament that on his reading, the committee had been "over-influenced" by the "lobby" for "legalisation" responsible for "that notorious advertisement", adding that "it was wrong for the committee to report on one drug in isolation in the way that it did". However, a year later he introduced comprehensive new consolidating legislation that had the effect of implementing Wootton’s proposal.
While recreational use, possession and trade of non-medicinal drugs described by the Opium Law are all technically illegal under Dutch law, official policy since the late 20th century has been to openly tolerate all recreational use while tolerating the other two under certain circumstances. This pragmatic approach was motivated by the idea that a drug-free Dutch society is unrealistic and unattainable, and efforts would be better spent trying to minimize harm caused by recreational drug use. As a result of this gedoogbeleid, the Netherlands is typically seen as much more tolerant of drugs than most other countries.
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances.
The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It represents action in line with treaty commitments under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 is an international treaty that controls activities of specific narcotic drugs and lays down a system of regulations for their medical and scientific uses; it also establishes the International Narcotics Control Board.
The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, commonly referred to as the NDPS Act, is an Act of the Parliament of India that prohibits a person the production/manufacturing/cultivation, possession, sale, purchasing, transport, storage, and/or consumption of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance. The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 23 August 1985. It was passed by both the Houses of Parliament, received assent from then President Giani Zail Singh on 16 September 1985, and came into force on 14 November 1985. The NDPS Act has since been amended four times — in 1988, 2001, 2014 and 2021. The Act extends to the whole of India and it applies also to all Indian citizens outside India and to all persons on ships and aircraft registered in India.
Cannabis classification in the United Kingdom refers to the class of drugs, as determined by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, that cannabis is placed in. Between 1928 and 2004 and since 2009, it has been classified as a class B drug. From 2004 to 2009, it was a class C drug. At present, it is a class B, with very limited exceptions.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is a British statutory advisory non-departmental public body, which was established under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
Drug classification: making a hash of it? is a 2006 report written by the UK Science and Technology Select Committee and submitted to the British House of Commons. The report suggested that the current system of recreational drug classification in the UK was arbitrary and unscientific, suggesting a more scientific measure of harm be used for classifying drugs. The report also strongly criticised the decision to place fresh psychedelic mushrooms in Class A, the same category as cocaine and heroin.
Drug liberalization is a drug policy process of decriminalizing or legalizing the use or sale of prohibited drugs. Variations of drug liberalization include: drug legalization, drug re-legalization and drug decriminalization. Proponents of drug liberalization may favor a regulatory regime for the production, marketing, and distribution of some or all currently illegal drugs in a manner analogous to that for alcohol, caffeine and tobacco.
Illicit drug use in Australia is the recreational use of prohibited drugs in Australia. Illicit drugs include illegal drugs, pharmaceutical drugs when used for non-medical purposes, and other substances used inappropriately. According to government and community organisations, the use and abuse, and the illegality, of illicit drugs is a social, health and legal issue that creates an annual illegal market estimated to be worth A$6.7 billion.
The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 is a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics signed in Vienna, Austria on 21 February 1971. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 did not ban the many newly discovered psychotropics, since its scope was limited to drugs with cannabis, coca and opium-like effects.
The use of cannabis in New Zealand is regulated by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, which makes unauthorised possession of any amount of cannabis a crime. Cannabis is the fourth-most widely used recreational drug in New Zealand, after caffeine, alcohol and tobacco, and the most widely used illicit drug. In 2001 a household survey revealed that 13.4% of New Zealanders aged 15–64 used cannabis. This ranked as the ninth-highest cannabis consumption level in the world.
Cannabis in the United Kingdom is illegal for recreational use and is classified as a Class B drug. In 2004, cannabis was made a Class C drug with less severe penalties but it was moved back to Class B in 2009. Medical use of cannabis, when prescribed by a registered specialist doctor, was legalised in November 2018.
Canada's drug regulations are measures of the Food and Drug Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. In relation to controlled and restricted drug products, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act establishes eight schedules of drugs and new penalties for the possession, trafficking, exportation and production of controlled substances as defined by the Governor-in-Council. Drug policy of Canada has traditionally favoured punishment of the smallest of offences, but this convention was partially broken in 1996 with the passing of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Cannabis is a plant used in Australia for recreational, medicinal and industrial purposes. In 2019, 36% of Australians over the age of fourteen years had used cannabis in their lifetime and 11.6% had used cannabis in the last 12 months.
The Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction, commonly called the Brain Committee after its chairman Sir Russell Brain, was created by the Home Office in 1958 to consider issues related to drugs and drug addiction in the United Kingdom. The committee explored whether or not certain drugs should be considered addictive or habit-forming; examined whether there was a medical need to provide special, including institutional, treatment outside the resources already available, for persons addicted to drugs; and made recommendations, including proposals for administrative measures, to the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Stephen Irwin Abrams was an American scholar of parapsychology and a cannabis rights activist who was a long-standing resident of the United Kingdom. He is best known for sponsoring and authoring the full page advertisement petitioning for cannabis law reform which appeared in The Times on 24 July 1967.
The list includes and details significant events that occurred in the global history of national-level implementations of, or changes made to, laws surrounding the use, sale, or production of the psychoactive drug cannabis.
The Australian National Task Force on Cannabis (NTFC) was a specialised unit formed in April 1992 under the aegis of the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy (MCDS) who are responsible for implementing national consistency in policy principles related to Australia's National Drug Strategy.
Cannabis in The Bahamas is illegal.