Saturday, May 13, 2017

The evidence behind the Lib Dem call to legalise cannabis


The Liberal Democrat call for a regulated market in cannabis this week has attracted more media interest than out policies normally do.

You can read the evidence behind this policy in the report A framework for a regulated market for cannabis in the UK: Recommendations from an expert panel.

That expert panel was made up of:
  • Steve Rolles, Senior Policy Analyst, Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Chair)
  • Mike Barton, Chief Constable, Durham Constabulary
  • Niamh Eastwood, Executive Director, Release
  • Tom Lloyd, Chair of the National Cannabis Coalition and former Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police
  • Professor Fiona Measham, Professor of Criminology, Durham University
  • Professor David Nutt, Founder of DrugScience and former Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs
  • Professor Harry Sumnall, Professor of Substance Use, Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University
To give you a taste of the report:
The prohibition on cannabis production and supply: 
  • Creates opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs, fuelling a vast and socially corrosive criminal market, associated with violence, people trafficking and slavery, including of children 
  • Ensures that people who use cannabis have little or no information about the potency of the product they are consuming 
  • Ensures people who use cannabis buy from potentially risky illicit markets that put them in contact with dealers of other more harmful drugs 
  • Has progressively tilted the market towards more risky products (with higher THC and lower CBD) that are more profitable to the criminal entrepreneurs who control the trade 
  • Has led to the rapid expansion of markets for more risky synthetic cannabis analogues (e.g. ‘spice’)

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