SUPPLEMENT ARTICLE
doi:10.1111/add.12907
Getting to grips with the cannabis problem: the evolving contributions and impact of Griffith Edwards Wayne Hall The University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
ABSTRACT Griffith Edwards played an important role in cannabis policy debates within government advisory committees in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s until the early 1980s. This has largely been hidden from public knowledge by the confidentiality of these committee discussions. The purpose of this paper is to use Griffith’s writings and the results of recent historical scholarship to outline the views he expressed, the reasons he gave for them, and to provide a brief assessment of his contribution to the development of British cannabis policy. Keywords
Advisory council on the misuse of drugs (UK), cannabis policy, health effects, policy history, Public Health.
Correspondence to: Wayne Hall, University of Queensland Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research, K Floor, Mental Health Building, Royal Brisbane and Womens’ Hospital Site, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 4029, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
as heroin and cocaine [8]. Cannabis use was very rare in Britain before the 1950s, when use was first reported among immigrants from former colonies in the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa who brought their traditional cannabis use to Britain [6]. In the 1960s, cannabis use diffused to British youth, initially working-class youth in areas of London with African Caribbean migrants, and later to other large cities with immigrant populations [6]. By the late 1960s in London, using cannabis was a potent way for many disaffected youths to signal their rejection of majority culture [6]. Steep rises in the number of young people arrested for cannabis possession in the late 1960s prompted campaigns to decriminalize cannabis use [6]. In 1968, a subcommittee of the ad-hoc Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, with Barbara Wootton as Chair, inquired into the health effects of cannabis. The Wootton Committee concluded that moderate use of cannabis posed little or no risk to the health of users [9], but conceded that legalization of cannabis was not an option. Instead, the Committee recommended a compromise; namely, that the criminal law be left unchanged but the courts should avoid imposing prison sentences on first offenders and that the police use discretion in dealing with cannabis offenders [6,10]. The proposal was rejected by the then Labour Minister, James Callaghan, but later implemented by a Conservative government [6,11].
The British government enacted a ban on cannabis in 1928 as a consequence of signing an international drug control treaty in 1925, which included cannabis in the same class
The compromise was seen as a policy stopgap, but with minor changes it remained at the centre of British cannabis policy for the next 40 years [6]. It reduced public criticism of the use of the criminal law against youthful cannabis
INTRODUCTION I first met Griffith Edwards in 1982, when he was on a speaking tour for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. I had no interest in alcohol or drugs at the time, but remember being impressed by the intellectual quality of his arguments, despite the very low opinion that my senior colleagues in psychiatry held of the addictions field. My next encounter was in 1991, when I visited the National Addiction Centre as a new entrant to the addictions field. Griffith gave me a warm welcome, showed a keen interest in my as-yet largely unpublished work, and invited me to one of his and Sue’s ‘suppers’ at Crooms Hill. I got to know him better over later visits, and by the late 1990s a visit to London was incomplete unless it included an hour of stimulating conversation over lunch with Griffith. Griffith published comparatively few papers on cannabis [1–5], so until reading historical scholarship by Mills [6] and Taylor [7] I was not aware of the role that he played in cannabis policy debates within government advisory committees in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s until the early 1980s. The purpose of this paper is to outline his views and the largely hidden role that he played.
© 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
Addiction, 110, 36–39
Griffith Edwards’ contributions to British cannabis policy
users, but this came at a cost. The police used their discretion to stop and search minority youth for cannabis and obtained cannabis convictions against individuals who were suspected of more serious offences that they were unable to prove [6]. GRIFFITH EDWARDS AND THE ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE MISUSE OF DRUGS In the early 1970s, the UK government sought expert advice on the health effects of cannabis use from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The ACMD was created under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to advise government on drug policy issues, such as the classification of different illicit drugs [6,7]. The ACMD deliberated behind closed doors, but analyses of its minutes and the recollections of key participants have illuminated the debates about the health risks of cannabis and the most appropriate policy responses to its use [6,7,12]. According to Griffith Edwards’ retrospective view in 2010, the ACMD became ‘bogged down’ [12] because of disagreements on two sets of issues: (1) the inferences that could reasonably be drawn from the limited animal and clinical evidence about the harms of cannabis use; and (2) the weight that should be given in framing policy to the harms arising from cannabis use and the harms caused by the arrest and imprisonment of users. These disagreements were epitomized by the contrasting views of two pharmacologists who played leading roles in the cannabis policy debate in Britain: William Paton and John Graham. Paton and colleagues at Oxford had undertaken animal studies which suggested that cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabis smoke were toxic to cellular processes, teratogenic, mutagenic and carcinogenic [13]. Paton argued for a precautionary approach to policy: the safest policy, he argued, given the animal evidence of harmful effects, and uncertainty about the long-term effects of human use, was to retain criminal penalties [6,7,13]. Graham, who had conducted research on the potential therapeutic uses of cannabinoids, was optimistic about their future medical use [14] and much less concerned about the harms of recreational cannabis use by young adults [15]. He was also philosophically opposed to the state preventing adults from deciding whether or not to use cannabis. He supported [6] the reclassification of cannabis from class B to class C, a proposal that would have eliminated imprisonment for personal possession and use of cannabis [6,7]. GRIFFITH EDWARDS’ VIEWS ON CANNABIS Edwards’ most detailed analysis of cannabis policy was written for the ACMD Expert Working Group in 1973 [7] © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
37
and later published as a monograph [1]. Its Kantian subtitle (‘A Groundwork for Debate’) suggests that he hoped to resolve the disagreements between the members of the expert working group by: (1) specifying criteria that should be used in deciding whether a prohibited drug such as cannabis should be legalized; and (2) using these criteria to assess the evidence on its adverse health effects and the probable effects that legalization would have on cannabis use and cannabis-related harm. Edwards’ criteria gave a high priority to protecting the Public Health (capitalized throughout). He argued that the decision on whether or not to legalize cannabis should be based on the same approach adopted recently in assessing the safety of new pharmaceutical drugs in the wake of the thalidomide scandal. That is, we should only consider legalizing cannabis if our knowledge of its pharmacology and safety from animal and human studies enabled us to be confident that any increase in cannabis use (especially heavier cannabis use) that was likely to occur after legalization would not adversely affect public health. Edwards’ analysis echoed Paton’s concerns. He stressed our ignorance about the active constituents in cannabis and their pharmacological effects, and he cited evidence from animal studies on its cellular toxicity and probable teratogenicity, mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. He added an argument based on his analysis of the clinical evidence. He was critical of the popular inference that the absence of reported adverse effects among British cannabis users indicated that cannabis did not produce any adverse effects. Edwards argued that one would expect to see little evidence of harm when most users used intermittently and typically used low doses of THC. He argued that we should give greater weight to clinical observations from countries which had longer experience with the daily use of cannabis products delivering much higher average doses of THC; namely, Egypt, India and Israel. Careful clinical observations in these countries, he believed, had identified adverse effects of heavy cannabis use that were unlikely to be detected among British cannabis users. Edwards cited case-study evidence that high doses of cannabis could produce an acute psychosis, although he thought these psychoses would persist only if heavy cannabis use continued. He also argued that a cannabis dependence syndrome was likely to exist. He appealed to: animal evidence of tolerance and withdrawal symptoms; the rapid development of tolerance to THC in human studies in which users had daily access to unlimited quantities of cannabis over a week or more; and the fact that heavy users in traditional cannabis-using cultures typically obtained THC doses that were much higher than those used by British users. He stressed that a dependence syndrome made it more likely that heavy users would experience adverse health effects of cannabis use. He was also persuaded Addiction, 110, 36–39
38
Wayne Hall
by clinical reports of an amotivational syndrome in very heavy cannabis users in Egypt and India. Edwards argued that cannabis legalization was likely to increase regular use, although he acknowledged it was uncertain by how much. He was sceptical of arguments that heavy cannabis use under a legal market could be minimized by regulations (e.g. by using taxation to increase its price, or setting maximum THC levels) or by the development of social norms against heavy use. He appealed to experiences from alcohol policy in arguing that regulation and social norms were unlikely to offset the harms arising from any increase in regular use after legalization. He was also concerned that heavy cannabis users would use in combination with other drugs, especially alcohol, thereby increasing harm. In discussing the policy implications of the adverse health effects of cannabis, Edwards acknowledged that one coherently advocated for either the status quo or for liberalization. The policy that was chosen would depend upon the weight one gave to protecting public health and respecting the liberties of adults. He declined to express a personal view on what this choice should be, because he argued that it was the role of elected governments to decide upon a cannabis policy by weighing the evidence and trading off these competing social values. GRIFFITH EDWARDS’ VIEWS IN RETROSPECT Griffith Edwards’ concerns about the probable adverse health effects of chronic heavy cannabis use proved better-founded than the optimistic views of some ACMD colleagues. He was correct to argue that some contemporaries were misled into believing that cannabis use had no adverse health effects, because very few users took large enough doses regularly for long enough to identify adverse effects. Early British experience with cannabis use has proved a poor guide to the adverse health effects seen in contemporary Britain in which substantial proportions of users initiate use in their mid-teens and are daily users throughout their 20s of cannabis products with higher average doses of THC [16,17]; and he was correct about there being a cannabis dependence syndrome [18]. He opposed the majority view within the ACMD that favoured re-classification of cannabis [7], but he did not support draconian penalties for personal use. Indeed, he was a consistent supporter of the Wootton Committee recommendation that criminal penalties for cannabis use should only be lightly enforced. He endorsed this view in a 1971 public lecture [19], in a 1987 Report for the Royal College of Psychiatrists that he chaired [20] and in his 2004 book Matters of Substance [21]. He reiterated this view at a witness seminar in 2010 in which he commented © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
on the earlier cannabis policy debates [12]. By 2010, however, he seemed much less optimistic about the role of reason in cannabis policy than the Kantian subtitle of his 1974 paper suggested: ‘I always naively hoped to inhabit the world of pure reason and pure science but the world, of course, is not like that. With drugs we live in a context, often of passion, muddle, overstatement and betrayal of logic. I’m sure it’s always going to be like that’ ([12], p. 29). Declaration of interests None. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Sarah Yeates for her assistance in researching this paper and in preparing it for publication; and Michael Farrell, John Strang and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Preparation of this paper was funded by a NHMRC Australia Fellowship. References 1. Edwards G. Cannabis and the criteria for legalisation of a currently prohibited recreational drug: groundwork for a debate. Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl 1974; 251: 1–62. 2. Edwards G. Cannabis and the psychiatric position. In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 321–42. 3. Edwards G. Cannabis and the question of dependence. In: Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, editors. Report of the Expert Group on the Effects of Cannabis Use. London: Home Office; 1982, pp. 34–9. 4. Edwards G. The question of psychiatric morbidity. In: Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, editors. Report of the Expert Group on the Effects of Cannabis Use. London: Home Office; 1982, pp. 40–49. 5. Edwards G. Psychopathology of a drug experience. Br J Psychiatry 1983; 143: 139–42. 6. Mills J. H. Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928–2008. Oxford University Press: Oxford; 2013. 7. Taylor S. Remedicalising Cannabis: Science, Medicine and Policy, 1973 to the Early Twenty-First Century. Unpublished thesis. London: School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; 2010. 8. Kendell R. Cannabis condemned: the proscription of Indian hemp. Addiction 2003; 98: 143–51. 9. Wootton Committee. Cannabis: Report of the Hallucinogens Sub-Committee of the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, Chaired by Baroness Wootton of Abinger. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office: London; 1968. 10. Oakley A. A Critical Woman: Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. Bloomsbury: London; 2011. 11. Hawks D. The law relating to cannabis 1964–1973: how subtle an ass? In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 379–416. 12. Crowther S. M., Reynolds L. A., Tansey E. M. (Eds). The Medicalization of Cannabis: the Transcript of a Witness Seminar held by Addiction, 110, 36–39
Griffith Edwards’ contributions to British cannabis policy
13. 14.
15.
16.
the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London, on 24 March 2009. Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL: London; 2010. Paton W. D. Cannabis and its problems. Proc R Soc Med 1973; 66: 718–21. Graham J. D. P. If cannabis were a new drug. In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 417–37. Graham J. D. P. Cannabis and health. In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 271–320. Hall W. D., Degenhardt L. The adverse health effects of nonmedical cannabis use. Lancet 2009; 374: 1383–91.
© 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
39
17. Hall W. D., Pacula R. Cannabis Use and Dependence: Public Health and Public Policy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; 2010. 18. Anthony J. C. The epidemiology of cannabis dependence. In: Roffman R. A., Stephens R. S., editors. Cannabis Dependence: Its Nature, Consequences and Treatment. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; 2006, pp. 58–105. 19. Edwards G. Unreason in an Age of Reason. Royal Society of Medicine: London; 1971. 20. Royal College of Psychiatrists. Drug Scenes: A Report on Drugs and Drug Dependence. Gaskell: London; 1987. 21. Edwards G. Matters of Substance: Drugs—And Why Everyone’s a User. Allen Lane: London; 2004.
Addiction, 110, 36–39
doi:10.1111/add.12907
Getting to grips with the cannabis problem: the evolving contributions and impact of Griffith Edwards Wayne Hall The University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
ABSTRACT Griffith Edwards played an important role in cannabis policy debates within government advisory committees in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s until the early 1980s. This has largely been hidden from public knowledge by the confidentiality of these committee discussions. The purpose of this paper is to use Griffith’s writings and the results of recent historical scholarship to outline the views he expressed, the reasons he gave for them, and to provide a brief assessment of his contribution to the development of British cannabis policy. Keywords
Advisory council on the misuse of drugs (UK), cannabis policy, health effects, policy history, Public Health.
Correspondence to: Wayne Hall, University of Queensland Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research, K Floor, Mental Health Building, Royal Brisbane and Womens’ Hospital Site, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 4029, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
as heroin and cocaine [8]. Cannabis use was very rare in Britain before the 1950s, when use was first reported among immigrants from former colonies in the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa who brought their traditional cannabis use to Britain [6]. In the 1960s, cannabis use diffused to British youth, initially working-class youth in areas of London with African Caribbean migrants, and later to other large cities with immigrant populations [6]. By the late 1960s in London, using cannabis was a potent way for many disaffected youths to signal their rejection of majority culture [6]. Steep rises in the number of young people arrested for cannabis possession in the late 1960s prompted campaigns to decriminalize cannabis use [6]. In 1968, a subcommittee of the ad-hoc Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, with Barbara Wootton as Chair, inquired into the health effects of cannabis. The Wootton Committee concluded that moderate use of cannabis posed little or no risk to the health of users [9], but conceded that legalization of cannabis was not an option. Instead, the Committee recommended a compromise; namely, that the criminal law be left unchanged but the courts should avoid imposing prison sentences on first offenders and that the police use discretion in dealing with cannabis offenders [6,10]. The proposal was rejected by the then Labour Minister, James Callaghan, but later implemented by a Conservative government [6,11].
The British government enacted a ban on cannabis in 1928 as a consequence of signing an international drug control treaty in 1925, which included cannabis in the same class
The compromise was seen as a policy stopgap, but with minor changes it remained at the centre of British cannabis policy for the next 40 years [6]. It reduced public criticism of the use of the criminal law against youthful cannabis
INTRODUCTION I first met Griffith Edwards in 1982, when he was on a speaking tour for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. I had no interest in alcohol or drugs at the time, but remember being impressed by the intellectual quality of his arguments, despite the very low opinion that my senior colleagues in psychiatry held of the addictions field. My next encounter was in 1991, when I visited the National Addiction Centre as a new entrant to the addictions field. Griffith gave me a warm welcome, showed a keen interest in my as-yet largely unpublished work, and invited me to one of his and Sue’s ‘suppers’ at Crooms Hill. I got to know him better over later visits, and by the late 1990s a visit to London was incomplete unless it included an hour of stimulating conversation over lunch with Griffith. Griffith published comparatively few papers on cannabis [1–5], so until reading historical scholarship by Mills [6] and Taylor [7] I was not aware of the role that he played in cannabis policy debates within government advisory committees in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s until the early 1980s. The purpose of this paper is to outline his views and the largely hidden role that he played.
© 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
Addiction, 110, 36–39
Griffith Edwards’ contributions to British cannabis policy
users, but this came at a cost. The police used their discretion to stop and search minority youth for cannabis and obtained cannabis convictions against individuals who were suspected of more serious offences that they were unable to prove [6]. GRIFFITH EDWARDS AND THE ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE MISUSE OF DRUGS In the early 1970s, the UK government sought expert advice on the health effects of cannabis use from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The ACMD was created under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to advise government on drug policy issues, such as the classification of different illicit drugs [6,7]. The ACMD deliberated behind closed doors, but analyses of its minutes and the recollections of key participants have illuminated the debates about the health risks of cannabis and the most appropriate policy responses to its use [6,7,12]. According to Griffith Edwards’ retrospective view in 2010, the ACMD became ‘bogged down’ [12] because of disagreements on two sets of issues: (1) the inferences that could reasonably be drawn from the limited animal and clinical evidence about the harms of cannabis use; and (2) the weight that should be given in framing policy to the harms arising from cannabis use and the harms caused by the arrest and imprisonment of users. These disagreements were epitomized by the contrasting views of two pharmacologists who played leading roles in the cannabis policy debate in Britain: William Paton and John Graham. Paton and colleagues at Oxford had undertaken animal studies which suggested that cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabis smoke were toxic to cellular processes, teratogenic, mutagenic and carcinogenic [13]. Paton argued for a precautionary approach to policy: the safest policy, he argued, given the animal evidence of harmful effects, and uncertainty about the long-term effects of human use, was to retain criminal penalties [6,7,13]. Graham, who had conducted research on the potential therapeutic uses of cannabinoids, was optimistic about their future medical use [14] and much less concerned about the harms of recreational cannabis use by young adults [15]. He was also philosophically opposed to the state preventing adults from deciding whether or not to use cannabis. He supported [6] the reclassification of cannabis from class B to class C, a proposal that would have eliminated imprisonment for personal possession and use of cannabis [6,7]. GRIFFITH EDWARDS’ VIEWS ON CANNABIS Edwards’ most detailed analysis of cannabis policy was written for the ACMD Expert Working Group in 1973 [7] © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
37
and later published as a monograph [1]. Its Kantian subtitle (‘A Groundwork for Debate’) suggests that he hoped to resolve the disagreements between the members of the expert working group by: (1) specifying criteria that should be used in deciding whether a prohibited drug such as cannabis should be legalized; and (2) using these criteria to assess the evidence on its adverse health effects and the probable effects that legalization would have on cannabis use and cannabis-related harm. Edwards’ criteria gave a high priority to protecting the Public Health (capitalized throughout). He argued that the decision on whether or not to legalize cannabis should be based on the same approach adopted recently in assessing the safety of new pharmaceutical drugs in the wake of the thalidomide scandal. That is, we should only consider legalizing cannabis if our knowledge of its pharmacology and safety from animal and human studies enabled us to be confident that any increase in cannabis use (especially heavier cannabis use) that was likely to occur after legalization would not adversely affect public health. Edwards’ analysis echoed Paton’s concerns. He stressed our ignorance about the active constituents in cannabis and their pharmacological effects, and he cited evidence from animal studies on its cellular toxicity and probable teratogenicity, mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. He added an argument based on his analysis of the clinical evidence. He was critical of the popular inference that the absence of reported adverse effects among British cannabis users indicated that cannabis did not produce any adverse effects. Edwards argued that one would expect to see little evidence of harm when most users used intermittently and typically used low doses of THC. He argued that we should give greater weight to clinical observations from countries which had longer experience with the daily use of cannabis products delivering much higher average doses of THC; namely, Egypt, India and Israel. Careful clinical observations in these countries, he believed, had identified adverse effects of heavy cannabis use that were unlikely to be detected among British cannabis users. Edwards cited case-study evidence that high doses of cannabis could produce an acute psychosis, although he thought these psychoses would persist only if heavy cannabis use continued. He also argued that a cannabis dependence syndrome was likely to exist. He appealed to: animal evidence of tolerance and withdrawal symptoms; the rapid development of tolerance to THC in human studies in which users had daily access to unlimited quantities of cannabis over a week or more; and the fact that heavy users in traditional cannabis-using cultures typically obtained THC doses that were much higher than those used by British users. He stressed that a dependence syndrome made it more likely that heavy users would experience adverse health effects of cannabis use. He was also persuaded Addiction, 110, 36–39
38
Wayne Hall
by clinical reports of an amotivational syndrome in very heavy cannabis users in Egypt and India. Edwards argued that cannabis legalization was likely to increase regular use, although he acknowledged it was uncertain by how much. He was sceptical of arguments that heavy cannabis use under a legal market could be minimized by regulations (e.g. by using taxation to increase its price, or setting maximum THC levels) or by the development of social norms against heavy use. He appealed to experiences from alcohol policy in arguing that regulation and social norms were unlikely to offset the harms arising from any increase in regular use after legalization. He was also concerned that heavy cannabis users would use in combination with other drugs, especially alcohol, thereby increasing harm. In discussing the policy implications of the adverse health effects of cannabis, Edwards acknowledged that one coherently advocated for either the status quo or for liberalization. The policy that was chosen would depend upon the weight one gave to protecting public health and respecting the liberties of adults. He declined to express a personal view on what this choice should be, because he argued that it was the role of elected governments to decide upon a cannabis policy by weighing the evidence and trading off these competing social values. GRIFFITH EDWARDS’ VIEWS IN RETROSPECT Griffith Edwards’ concerns about the probable adverse health effects of chronic heavy cannabis use proved better-founded than the optimistic views of some ACMD colleagues. He was correct to argue that some contemporaries were misled into believing that cannabis use had no adverse health effects, because very few users took large enough doses regularly for long enough to identify adverse effects. Early British experience with cannabis use has proved a poor guide to the adverse health effects seen in contemporary Britain in which substantial proportions of users initiate use in their mid-teens and are daily users throughout their 20s of cannabis products with higher average doses of THC [16,17]; and he was correct about there being a cannabis dependence syndrome [18]. He opposed the majority view within the ACMD that favoured re-classification of cannabis [7], but he did not support draconian penalties for personal use. Indeed, he was a consistent supporter of the Wootton Committee recommendation that criminal penalties for cannabis use should only be lightly enforced. He endorsed this view in a 1971 public lecture [19], in a 1987 Report for the Royal College of Psychiatrists that he chaired [20] and in his 2004 book Matters of Substance [21]. He reiterated this view at a witness seminar in 2010 in which he commented © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
on the earlier cannabis policy debates [12]. By 2010, however, he seemed much less optimistic about the role of reason in cannabis policy than the Kantian subtitle of his 1974 paper suggested: ‘I always naively hoped to inhabit the world of pure reason and pure science but the world, of course, is not like that. With drugs we live in a context, often of passion, muddle, overstatement and betrayal of logic. I’m sure it’s always going to be like that’ ([12], p. 29). Declaration of interests None. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Sarah Yeates for her assistance in researching this paper and in preparing it for publication; and Michael Farrell, John Strang and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Preparation of this paper was funded by a NHMRC Australia Fellowship. References 1. Edwards G. Cannabis and the criteria for legalisation of a currently prohibited recreational drug: groundwork for a debate. Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl 1974; 251: 1–62. 2. Edwards G. Cannabis and the psychiatric position. In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 321–42. 3. Edwards G. Cannabis and the question of dependence. In: Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, editors. Report of the Expert Group on the Effects of Cannabis Use. London: Home Office; 1982, pp. 34–9. 4. Edwards G. The question of psychiatric morbidity. In: Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, editors. Report of the Expert Group on the Effects of Cannabis Use. London: Home Office; 1982, pp. 40–49. 5. Edwards G. Psychopathology of a drug experience. Br J Psychiatry 1983; 143: 139–42. 6. Mills J. H. Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928–2008. Oxford University Press: Oxford; 2013. 7. Taylor S. Remedicalising Cannabis: Science, Medicine and Policy, 1973 to the Early Twenty-First Century. Unpublished thesis. London: School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; 2010. 8. Kendell R. Cannabis condemned: the proscription of Indian hemp. Addiction 2003; 98: 143–51. 9. Wootton Committee. Cannabis: Report of the Hallucinogens Sub-Committee of the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, Chaired by Baroness Wootton of Abinger. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office: London; 1968. 10. Oakley A. A Critical Woman: Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. Bloomsbury: London; 2011. 11. Hawks D. The law relating to cannabis 1964–1973: how subtle an ass? In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 379–416. 12. Crowther S. M., Reynolds L. A., Tansey E. M. (Eds). The Medicalization of Cannabis: the Transcript of a Witness Seminar held by Addiction, 110, 36–39
Griffith Edwards’ contributions to British cannabis policy
13. 14.
15.
16.
the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London, on 24 March 2009. Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL: London; 2010. Paton W. D. Cannabis and its problems. Proc R Soc Med 1973; 66: 718–21. Graham J. D. P. If cannabis were a new drug. In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 417–37. Graham J. D. P. Cannabis and health. In: Graham J. D. P., editor. Cannabis and Health. Academic Press: London; 1976, pp. 271–320. Hall W. D., Degenhardt L. The adverse health effects of nonmedical cannabis use. Lancet 2009; 374: 1383–91.
© 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
39
17. Hall W. D., Pacula R. Cannabis Use and Dependence: Public Health and Public Policy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; 2010. 18. Anthony J. C. The epidemiology of cannabis dependence. In: Roffman R. A., Stephens R. S., editors. Cannabis Dependence: Its Nature, Consequences and Treatment. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; 2006, pp. 58–105. 19. Edwards G. Unreason in an Age of Reason. Royal Society of Medicine: London; 1971. 20. Royal College of Psychiatrists. Drug Scenes: A Report on Drugs and Drug Dependence. Gaskell: London; 1987. 21. Edwards G. Matters of Substance: Drugs—And Why Everyone’s a User. Allen Lane: London; 2004.
Addiction, 110, 36–39
