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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: How legalisation creates fortunes
The Times Tuesday 10 Jul 2001 PETER LILLEY'S proposals for the legalisation of cannabis have been compared to the end of Prohibition in America in 1933 when bootleggers such as Joe Kennedy Sr saw their chance to become both respectable and rich, and seized it. A look at the small print reveals another model, however: the 1961 Betting & Gaming Act, which allowed off-course gambling in Britain for the first time in more than 100 years. The new betting shops that opened were dingy places almost by government decree. The Act required that they did not encourage loitering and gamblers were expected to enter, place a bet and leave as quickly as possible. Off-course betting had been prohibited in 1853 when a number of bookmakers went bankrupt and refused to pay their customers. Betting went underground and a network of bookmakers' runners continued to service the nation's gamblers. Fred Done, an independent bookmaker with more than 250 shops, started out in 1959 helping his father run an illegal bookmaker's from under a tarpaulin in a back yard in the Knott Mill area of Manchester. "There were no books, no income tax, no betting duty," he said. "What you had at the end of your day was profit. The only payment you had to make was bribe money to the police." The Act required anyone asking for a licence for the new betting shops to demonstrate a knowledge of the business, so many backstreet bookies were happy to declare their convictions to magistrates. During the first five years after legalisation, magistrates granted 16,000 licences and many fortunes were made. Mr Done started out on his own in 1967. Today he and his brother Peter are said to be worth £78 million.
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