Stephen I. Abrams

Stephen Irwin Abrams (15 July 1938 in Chicago, Illinois – 21 November 2012) was an American scholar of parapsychology and a drug policy activist who was a long-standing resident of the United Kingdom. He is best known for sponsoring and authoring the full page advertisement petitioning for cannabis law reform which appeared in The Times on 24 July 1967.

Abrams was born and raised in Chicago, and began his undergraduate studies at Shimer College, where he enrolled in 1954. Then as now, Shimer offered an early entrance program for gifted students wishing to leave high school early. Abrams subsequently transferred to the University of Chicago, where he served as head of the Parapsychology Department from 1957 to 1960. He also became a "charter associate" of the Parapsychological Association.

Abrams was an Advanced Student at St. Catherine's College of Oxford University from 1960 to 1967. He headed a parapsychological laboratory in the University's Department of Biometry, investigating extrasensory perception.

In January 1967, the content of an article by Abrams "The Oxford Scene and the Law", intended as a contribution to a forthcoming book The Book of Grass was republished, without his permission, in The People Sunday newspaper. The article was a balanced reasoning on the social and personal effects of cannabis use and its repression. The article observed that under current laws cannabis users were punished more severely than heroin users. Cannabis smoking was regarded as a crime but heroin addiction was treated as an illness. Doctors had the right to prescribe heroin. The Court might send a cannabis smoker to prison and send a heroin user to a doctor. Presented in the sensationalist manner for which the paper was known, the story emphasized Abrams claim that 500 of Oxford's student body were cannabis users. The story spread. Headlines like "Smoke more pot. It's safer than beer", appeared in the popular press. On 1 February, the same day as long clarifying letter from him was printed in The Daily Telegraph, Abrams announced, via the pages of student newspaper Cherwell, the formation of SOMA, an acronym for the Society of Mental Awareness, as a drug research project. Two weeks later, on 15 February 1967, Abrams gave evidence before the University Committee on Student Health, which agreed to pursue his suggestion that the Home Secretary be prevailed upon to institute an inquiry. After the committee's published report received national press coverage, on 7 April 1967 home secretary Roy Jenkins appointed a "sub-committee on hallucinogens" to be chaired by Baroness Wootton to report to the Advisory Council on Drug Dependence, itself appointed four months earlier in December 1966.

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