18 October
A police raid on the London flat of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on this day in 1968 turned up 168 grammes of cannabis. Lennon took the rap and was fined £150 for the offence - getting off more lightly than Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who were imprisoned for the same offence the previous year.
Lennon’s arrest came 40 years after the Dangerous Drugs Act passed into law (on 28 September 1928), making cannabis possession illegal. The first arrest for cannabis under the Act took place at the Number 11 Club, in London’s Soho, in 1952.
In 1967, 2,393 persons were arrested for cannabis offences in the UK. In 2003, the last year before it was reclassified as a Class C drug, there were 77,500 convictions or cautions. This fell to 45,390 in 2004, when 27,520 street warnings were given for cannabis possession that would otherwise have led to prosecutions or cautions.
In the US, the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report revealed a record 829,625 arrests for marijuana violations in 2006, the vast majority of them for simple possession.
Red Pepper in print
Subscribe to get the latest issue of the magazine
#229 No Return to ‘Normal’ ● Sir David King blasts the government ● State power, policing and civil rights under Covid-19 ● Hope and determination in grassroots resistance ● Black liberation and Palestine ● The future of ‘live’ ● Pubs, patriotism and precarity ● Latest book reviews ● And much more!
And you choose how much to pay for your subscription...
Red Pepper by email
Get the latest articles and updates in your inbox
Am I a modern slave?
Lyn Caballero describes her experiences as a migrant domestic worker and explains why domestic workers are campaigning for immigration policy change
Political blackness and Palestinian solidarity
The question of Palestine has become a black political litmus test, argues Annie Olaloku-Teriba, defining the very nature of black identity and politics
After the virus: no return to the old economy
As the Covid recession hits, Adam Peggs lays out alternative economic proposals the Labour left should be demanding
In and against, and outside, the party
Following major defeats, the left on both sides of the Atlantic must urgently get stuck into community organising, movement building and political education, argues Joe Guinan
A tribute to Mike Cooley
Co-creator of the Lucas Plan, Mike showed how the immense talent of workers could be deployed for social use rather than private profit, writes Phil Asquith
Build small, think big
Phillip O’Sullivan looks at the role of community energy groups in disrupting the energy status quo
