Successful cannabis reforms are accelerating across the globe, benefitting millions of people, with good reason. The UK’s illegal cannabis trade alone is worth £2bn a year, profiting organised crime, and fuelling street crime, child exploitation and violence. The criminalisation of people who use cannabis – and, indeed, all drugs – is harmful, ineffective and costly.
Marginalised communities are carrying the greatest burden of these harms, as those who work in treatment, housing and other services know. For example, vulnerable people are evicted because smoking cannabis is specifically named in the (wildly out of date) 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act as something landlords must prevent. Possession offences can be part of an accumulation of convictions and unpaid fines leading to prison. Most police stop searches – disproportionately impacting Black people – are for cannabis, and young people carrying cannabis for older suppliers is an entry point to being drawn into county lines supply. Cannabis use can also be a barrier to accessing mental health services, in part because of its illegality.
Yet five years after legalisation in Canada, a substantial proportion of the cannabis market is now legally regulated. In the US, over half of the adult population can access legal cannabis, while in Europe, Germany is introducing a new non-profit model – based on one Transform helped Malta develop. The momentum is unstoppable.
The question is, what will the UK’s approach be? We need all concerned stakeholders – including readers of DDN – to help us develop a roadmap to reform. We need a regulatory model that benefits individuals, communities and society by putting social justice and public health at the heart of our new approach. If frontline expertise in the drugs field is not engaged in this debate at this critical early stage, we risk repeating mistakes made with over-commercialised, under-regulated alcohol and tobacco markets.
In the last 20 years, Transform has largely operated internationally on this issue, advising governments and working with civil society in almost every country that has legalised recreational cannabis (Canadian civil servants described our How to Regulate Cannabis guide as the ‘regulation bible’). We’ve also worked in the UK (for example, helping the Green Party and Liberal Democrats develop their cannabis legalisation policies) but now want to turn our full focus on our cannabis laws.
To make this possible we need help. That’s why we’ve launched a crowdfunder which has just reached £10,000 of our £50,000 target. This money will fund everything from an authoritative report on economic impacts to workshops engaging those with the greatest stakes in how cannabis is regulated – including drug services. Because it’s time to legalise and responsibly regulate the UK’s most widely used illegal drug.
Martin Powell is head of partnerships at Transform Drug Policy Foundation