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Vociferous and highly articulate campaigner for the legalisation of cannabis who enlisted many high-profile supporters
On July 24, 1967 readers of this newspaper would have found something out of the ordinary: a full-page advertisement headlined "The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice". Beginning with a quotation that pointed out the futility of legislating human desires, it offered a text that noted the new status of cannabis – a drug of recreation enjoyed by an increasing segment of an otherwise law-abiding population – and had extracts from several medical reports that ran counter to the popular image of an "evil" drug.
The advertisement added a list of 65 names – a wide representation of the cultural and scientific great and good – who suggested to the Home Secretary "that he implement a five-point programme of cannabis law reform".
This called for research into cannabis; the legalisation of smoking on private premises; the declassification of the drug as "dangerous" and its control rather than prohibition; the legalisation of private possession and use, or, failing that, minimal fines; and an amnesty for all those currently jailed for smoking on private premises.
The advertisement was organised by SOMA, the Society of Mental Awareness (with tips of the hat to the RigVeda and to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), the creation of Stephen Abrams, a 29-year-old American researcher who was an advanced student at St Catherine's College, Oxford. For the rest of the decade Abrams would be Britain's leading proponent of cannabis reform and thereafter recognised internationally as an expert in the field. He did not return to America and lived for many years in the same flat in Notting Hill.
Stephen Irwin Abrams was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938 and adopted by Philip Abrams, a paediatrician, and his wife. A lifelong obsession with opera, of which he possessed a wide knowledge, led to his own operacentred radio show on Chicago radio when just 16. Later he extended his expertise to Bob Dylan and the bluesman Frank Stokes. He attended Duke University, North Carolina, where he studied under the radical psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. Abrams arrived in Oxford in 1960, and until 1967 headed a parapsychological laboratory in the university's Department of Biometry, investigating extrasensory perception. He was allegedly paid more than his college's master. The work was linked, like similar studies elsewhere, to the CIA's MK Ultra project which focused on the potential uses of behavioural engineering – leading to suggestions that Abrams was a member of "the company". People, a friend recalled, would have loved him to be a spy, but this tall, gangling man, a "badly rolled joint" as another friend saw him, was no James Bond; instead, he discovered, the FBI had him on file.
His public involvement with cannabis surfaced in January 1967 when he wrote a contribution, "The Oxford Scene and the Law", to a book on the drug: Leaves of Grass. His position, the basis of his future campaigning, was that the legal position of cannabis users was disproportionately harsh (especially in the context of Britain's then sympathetic attitude to heroin addicts) and that such repression was not working. He claimed that at Oxford alone 500 students smoked. The piece was picked up and sensationalised by The People newspaper. More coverage followed. On February 1 he announced the founding of SOMA and the university's own Student Health Report called for a nationwide look at cannabis, a call that was greeted by the Home Secretary's announcement of the creation of "a sub-committee on hallucinogens" to be headed by the sociologist Baroness Wootton. Abrams justifiably saw this as a triumph. As he put it in his 1993 memoir, Hashish Fudge, "We hoped for something earth-shaking."
In June the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were convicted, and briefly jailed for drug offences, eliciting from The Times its celebrated editorial "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" which condemned the authorities' heavy-handedness. Demonstrations outside the News of the World, which had persuaded the police to raid the rock stars, led to the founding of Release, the counterculture's home-grown advice centre for those facing any form of drug prosecution. Abrams, who had joined the demo, was a co-founder.
The decision to run an advertisement was impelled by the desire to spur on the Wootton Committee. Abrams won over a wide spectrum of signatories (including the Beatles whose office paid the £1,800 bill) and publication gained predictably explosive responses. Abrams, as International Times put it, "appears on television with amazing regularity" – and on one occasion consumed a large joint. The Wootton Report was finalised in 1969 but a new, authoritarian Home Secretary made it clear that its liberal recommendations would not pass. Yet as Abrams, who closed SOMA in 1970, noted later: "For all his posturing [he] did not refuse to implement the Wootton Report. He merely refused to legislate immediately at a time when new comprehensive legislation was being planned."
In fact 1970s cannabis legislation moved gradually towards liberalisation, at least for personal use. The downgrade in its classification (albeit temporary) would follow in 2001. In 1968 Abrams experimented with THC, the active property of cannabis, and still legal; it was synthesised at SOMA's Fulham Road premises and two doctors were licensed to prescribe. "This dangerous man must be stopped!" demanded the News of the World.
In 1965 Abrams had married Jane Firbank. They were divorced in 1972. There were no children. From 1970-72 he lived with friends at Hilton Hall, Cambridgeshire, once home of the novelist and critic David Garnett. Here, in the seclusion of the dovecote, Abrams wrote his thesis on synchronicity, pursuing his studies in Jungian analysis.
So far so serious. But the tone was eccentric more than academic. A man who could and would, "talk for London, America, the world", a man who embraced the arcane alter-egos Mrs Eva Beast and Baron Chicago, and a man who could hypnotise a lazy friend and dispatch him on a two-mile round trip for a packet of cigarettes.
In July 1967 he had arranged a "Legalise Pot Rally" in Hyde Park and his last words were those of remembrance: "I don't care whether I'm buried or burnt: I would just like a statue at Speakers Corner." Perhaps. In the meantime his research materials have gone to the Wellcome Trust and his many operatic recordings to two African charities.
Steve Abrams, drugs campaigner, was born on July 15, 1938. He died on November 21, 2012, aged 74
News Hawk- TruthSeekr420 420 MAGAZINE
Source: thetimes.co.uk
Author: thetimes.co.uk
Contact: Contact
Website: Steve Abrams | The Times
On July 24, 1967 readers of this newspaper would have found something out of the ordinary: a full-page advertisement headlined "The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice". Beginning with a quotation that pointed out the futility of legislating human desires, it offered a text that noted the new status of cannabis – a drug of recreation enjoyed by an increasing segment of an otherwise law-abiding population – and had extracts from several medical reports that ran counter to the popular image of an "evil" drug.
The advertisement added a list of 65 names – a wide representation of the cultural and scientific great and good – who suggested to the Home Secretary "that he implement a five-point programme of cannabis law reform".
This called for research into cannabis; the legalisation of smoking on private premises; the declassification of the drug as "dangerous" and its control rather than prohibition; the legalisation of private possession and use, or, failing that, minimal fines; and an amnesty for all those currently jailed for smoking on private premises.
The advertisement was organised by SOMA, the Society of Mental Awareness (with tips of the hat to the RigVeda and to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), the creation of Stephen Abrams, a 29-year-old American researcher who was an advanced student at St Catherine's College, Oxford. For the rest of the decade Abrams would be Britain's leading proponent of cannabis reform and thereafter recognised internationally as an expert in the field. He did not return to America and lived for many years in the same flat in Notting Hill.
Stephen Irwin Abrams was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938 and adopted by Philip Abrams, a paediatrician, and his wife. A lifelong obsession with opera, of which he possessed a wide knowledge, led to his own operacentred radio show on Chicago radio when just 16. Later he extended his expertise to Bob Dylan and the bluesman Frank Stokes. He attended Duke University, North Carolina, where he studied under the radical psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. Abrams arrived in Oxford in 1960, and until 1967 headed a parapsychological laboratory in the university's Department of Biometry, investigating extrasensory perception. He was allegedly paid more than his college's master. The work was linked, like similar studies elsewhere, to the CIA's MK Ultra project which focused on the potential uses of behavioural engineering – leading to suggestions that Abrams was a member of "the company". People, a friend recalled, would have loved him to be a spy, but this tall, gangling man, a "badly rolled joint" as another friend saw him, was no James Bond; instead, he discovered, the FBI had him on file.
His public involvement with cannabis surfaced in January 1967 when he wrote a contribution, "The Oxford Scene and the Law", to a book on the drug: Leaves of Grass. His position, the basis of his future campaigning, was that the legal position of cannabis users was disproportionately harsh (especially in the context of Britain's then sympathetic attitude to heroin addicts) and that such repression was not working. He claimed that at Oxford alone 500 students smoked. The piece was picked up and sensationalised by The People newspaper. More coverage followed. On February 1 he announced the founding of SOMA and the university's own Student Health Report called for a nationwide look at cannabis, a call that was greeted by the Home Secretary's announcement of the creation of "a sub-committee on hallucinogens" to be headed by the sociologist Baroness Wootton. Abrams justifiably saw this as a triumph. As he put it in his 1993 memoir, Hashish Fudge, "We hoped for something earth-shaking."
In June the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were convicted, and briefly jailed for drug offences, eliciting from The Times its celebrated editorial "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" which condemned the authorities' heavy-handedness. Demonstrations outside the News of the World, which had persuaded the police to raid the rock stars, led to the founding of Release, the counterculture's home-grown advice centre for those facing any form of drug prosecution. Abrams, who had joined the demo, was a co-founder.
The decision to run an advertisement was impelled by the desire to spur on the Wootton Committee. Abrams won over a wide spectrum of signatories (including the Beatles whose office paid the £1,800 bill) and publication gained predictably explosive responses. Abrams, as International Times put it, "appears on television with amazing regularity" – and on one occasion consumed a large joint. The Wootton Report was finalised in 1969 but a new, authoritarian Home Secretary made it clear that its liberal recommendations would not pass. Yet as Abrams, who closed SOMA in 1970, noted later: "For all his posturing [he] did not refuse to implement the Wootton Report. He merely refused to legislate immediately at a time when new comprehensive legislation was being planned."
In fact 1970s cannabis legislation moved gradually towards liberalisation, at least for personal use. The downgrade in its classification (albeit temporary) would follow in 2001. In 1968 Abrams experimented with THC, the active property of cannabis, and still legal; it was synthesised at SOMA's Fulham Road premises and two doctors were licensed to prescribe. "This dangerous man must be stopped!" demanded the News of the World.
In 1965 Abrams had married Jane Firbank. They were divorced in 1972. There were no children. From 1970-72 he lived with friends at Hilton Hall, Cambridgeshire, once home of the novelist and critic David Garnett. Here, in the seclusion of the dovecote, Abrams wrote his thesis on synchronicity, pursuing his studies in Jungian analysis.
So far so serious. But the tone was eccentric more than academic. A man who could and would, "talk for London, America, the world", a man who embraced the arcane alter-egos Mrs Eva Beast and Baron Chicago, and a man who could hypnotise a lazy friend and dispatch him on a two-mile round trip for a packet of cigarettes.
In July 1967 he had arranged a "Legalise Pot Rally" in Hyde Park and his last words were those of remembrance: "I don't care whether I'm buried or burnt: I would just like a statue at Speakers Corner." Perhaps. In the meantime his research materials have gone to the Wellcome Trust and his many operatic recordings to two African charities.
Steve Abrams, drugs campaigner, was born on July 15, 1938. He died on November 21, 2012, aged 74
News Hawk- TruthSeekr420 420 MAGAZINE
Source: thetimes.co.uk
Author: thetimes.co.uk
Contact: Contact
Website: Steve Abrams | The Times