Cannabis nation : control and consumption in Britain, 1928-2008 / by James H. Mills.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mills, James H., 1970-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cannabis--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Cannabis.

Cannabis--Great Britain--History--21st century.

Cannabis--Government policy--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Cannabis--Government policy--Great Britain--History--21st century.

Cannabis--Law and legislation--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Cannabis--Law and legislation--Great Britain--History--21st century.

Marijuana Abuse.

Marijuana Smoking.

Phytotherapy.

Social Control Policies.

Cannabis--Law and legislation.

History.

Government policy.

Great Britain.

Medical Subjects:

Cannabis.

Marijuana Abuse.

Marijuana Smoking.

Phytotherapy.

Social Control Policies.

Physical Description:

ix, 292 pages : 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Cannabis has never been a more controversial substance in Britain. Over the last decade it has been reclassified twice, has been the subject of a range of official investigations and scientific studies, and has provoked media campaigns and all manner of political gesturing. Cannabis Nation seeks to understand this period by placing it back into the historical context of the long-term story of cannabis and the British. It takes up where its predecessor, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition 1800-1928 (2003) left off. James Mills traces the story back into the last days of the Empire, when Britain controlled cannabis-consuming societies in Asia and Africa even while there was little taste for the drug back home. He shows that cannabis was caught up in control regimes established to deal with opium and cocaine consumption, while it fell out of favour as a medicine. As such, when migration after the Second World War brought the Empire's cannabis-consumers to the UK, they faced hostile attitudes towards their favourite intoxicant. From that time on a growing number of groups and agencies took an interest in cannabis. Ambitious bureaucrats in the Home Office saw in it an opportunity to draw resources in to the Drugs Branch, while the police began to use laws related to it for a number of purposes. Experts ranging from pharmacologists to sociologists formed committees on the subject, and its association with colonial migrants lent it an exotic aura to the politically-minded of the 1960s counter-culture and the working-class youth of Britain's inner cities. Since the 1970s governments were content to devolve responsibility to the police for working out the best legal approach to the substance, and efforts to wresrie this back from them proved difficult a decade ago. Cannabis Nation considers all of these trends, details the often eccentric characters that have shaped them and concludes that current positions and arguments on cannabis can only be properly assessed if their historical origins are clearly understood. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

2 'Frost is the only thing which kills it': Lascars, the Drugs Branch, and Doctors, C.1928-C.1945 10

3 'Egypt was taking strong action against the traffic in hashish': 'Loco-weed', the League of Nations, and the British Empire, C.1928-C.1945 35

4 'The prevalence of hashish smoking among the coloured men': Migration, Communism, and Crime, 1945-1962 62

5 'Considered to be without medical justification': Science, Medicine, and Committees, 1945-1961 84

6 'Cannabis was spreading to white people': New Consumers, New Controls, 1962-1971 116

7 'The British Compromise': Devolved Power and the Domestic Consumer, 1971-1997 155

8 'I have decided to reclassify cannabis, subject to Parliamentary approval': Legislators, Law-Enforcers, Campaigns, and Classification, 1997-2008 186

9 Conclusion 216.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780199283422

0199283427

OCLC:

801588243