THE CAMPAIGNERS: SIXTIES SWINGERS HAD HISTORY ON THEIR SIDE

THIRTY-THREE years on, the names that helped fill the remarkable full-page
advertisement in The Times - calling for private use of cannabis to be
treated at worst as a misdemeanour - present a striking roster of Sixties
opinion-formers.

Radicals from the arts, politics and medicine had enthusiastically thrown
their weight behind the notion of clearing the jails of those imprisoned
for possession of the drug or for permitting its use on their premises.

Respectability rubbed shoulders with the Swinging Sixties. There were
Jonathan Aitken, who was then respectable, and the political agitator Tariq
Ali, who was not. All four Beatles signed, each taking care to mention his
MBE. The list bristled with important personalities: David Bailey, Graham
Greene, David Hockney, George Melly, David Dimbleby, Jonathan Miller,
Kenneth Tynan.

To a Guardian columnist, writing as recently as last August, the support of
public figures for decriminalisation of cannabis has developed from that
Times ad into an "old and enjoyable summer ritual" as predictable as a
hippy invasion of Stonehenge on Midsummer's Eve, or an English cricket
defeat.

In fact, as a chronology published by the Campaign to Legalise Cannabis
International Association (CLCIA) shows, signatories to The Times did
little more than maintain a trend dating from 2737BC. In that year,
according to the CLCIA's earliest reference, the drug is described as a
superior herb in "the world's first medical text, or pharmacopoeia, Shen
Yung's Pen Ts'ao, in China".

For the CLCIA, the history of campaigning can be reduced to catchy
footnotes. Hence, in 1500BC, "cannabis-smoking Scythians sweep through
Europe and Asia, settling and inventing the scythe"; a thousand years
later, a number of African and Asian religions "adopt cannabis"; later
still, the Roman Emperor Nero's surgeon, Dioscorides, is to be found
praising the drug "for making the stoutest cords and for its medicinal
properties".

Between then and the first quarter of the 20th century, the drug moved
through long spells of unqualified acceptability - Elizabeth I and George
Washington positively encouraged its cultivation - to an era of gathering
hostility. This culminated, in Britain, with the Dangerous Drugs Act
finally outlawing cannabis in 1928. But defenders of the drug were
undeterred.

The year of The Times ad was also the year of dramatic events in the
history of pro-cannabis agitation. Some 3,000 people staged a "smoke-in" in
Hyde Park; Mick Jagger and his Rolling Stones colleague Keith Richards were
jailed on drug charges, though they were quickly freed and their
convictions quashed. Public mood seemed to be turning. But the Labour
Government flatly rejected Lady Wootton's report, which declared that the
dangers of moderate use of cannabis had been exaggerated and urging reduced
penalties for small-scale possession.

In 1976, President Ford banned medical research on cannabis; in the
Nineties, Michael Howard, then Tory Home Secretary, twice raised penalties
for its use. But the voices identified by the whimsical Guardian columnist
have insisted on being heard. Rosie Boycott's short reign as editor of The
Independent is remembered chiefly for her "legalise cannabis" campaign.
More than 100 celebrities and academics supported her.

In parts of the world, involvement with cannabis still carries the risk of
draconian consequences. In America, a court condemned Elaine Prince-Patron,
an English grandmother and resident of Arizona, to life imprisonment, with
no parole for 25 years, after she was caught with 80lb of a
cannabis-related plant.

In Britain, big-time traffickers also attract heavy sentences. But while
attitudes vary around the country, there is growing evidence of greater
tolerance by the police and the courts of those involved in modest use or
even distribution.

A son of Lord Steel, the former Liberal leader, was jailed for nine months
for growing cannabis. But Jack Straw's 17-year-old son escaped with a
caution after selling the drug to an undercover tabloid reporter.
Individuals using the drug for the relief of pain or stress are still
pursued in the courts, but are generally treated with sympathy.

Alun Buffry, nominating officer of the Norfolk-based Legalise Cannabis
Alliance, which supports single-issue candidates at local and national
elections, said: "I think as far as the general public is concerned, we are
more of less halfway there. But major obstacles remain in Government,
particularly with Jack Straw and Tony Blair."

Mr Buffry, 50, an occasional user of the drug since university days in the
late Sixties, said the signatories to The Times advertisement were pioneers
in the sense of promoting decriminalisation. But he questioned the extent
of their historical influence. 'After all," he said, "sentences are higher
now than they were in the Seventies."