Beyond Silos: A New Conversation About Drug Reform?

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Almost 50 years ago The Times published one of the most famous editorials in the history of British newspapers. A few weeks before Mick Jagger was heavily fined thousands of pounds after a punitive trial for possession of cannabis. Conservative and middle-aged England thought he deserved it. But William Rees-Mogg, the then editor of The Times was unhappy. In a legendary leader he invoked Alexander Pope as he railed against the “primitive” impulse to “break a butterfly on a wheel”.

William Rees-Mogg's editorial in The Times. 1st August, 1967.

William Rees-Mogg’s editorial in The Times. 1st August, 1967.

A few weeks later he published a full-page advertisement dedicated to the proposition that “the law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice”. It contained the names of 50 prominent people from Jonathan Miller to an ambitious young MP Jonathan Aitken. They even launched a short-lived campaign advocating...

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