Cannabis Policy Reform in the UK: Legalisation vs Decriminalisation

Introduction: Parliament, Prohibition, and the 2015 Debate

In October 2015, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was forced to debate whether the current prohibition on cannabis should end in some form. "Forced" is the correct word here, because Parliament seems otherwise unwilling to address the issue; in this case, however, it was obliged by its own policy, whereby any petition signed by at least one hundred thousand people must necessarily trigger a parliamentary debate. The petition requesting that Parliament address the ending of cannabis prohibition received well over the required number of signatures — it was, in the words of Smith (2015), "a petition signed by 220,000 people — the third most popular on Parliament's website." Therefore, on 12 October 2015, Parliament was obliged to take up the matter for debate. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb ultimately took up the central cause of the petitioners and spoke directly in terms that reflected the basic premise of the petition:

"The whole debate has shifted dramatically now ... as we see state after state starting this debate, with many states in the U.S. deciding to establish legalised regulated markets. And of course the basic principle it seems to me is, do you put a potentially dangerous product into the hands of criminals who have no interest in your welfare at all, or do you seek to regulate it? And I think in terms of public health, protection of individuals, and avoiding the ludicrous criminalisation of so many young people, a legalised regulated market makes a lot of sense." (quoted in Hopkins 2015)

Certain aspects of Norman Lamb's statement require closer attention so that the terms of the debate over ending cannabis prohibition can be properly understood. The first is Lamb's direct reference to shifting policies in certain U.S. states, although perhaps not in that nation as a whole. Prohibitionist drug policies worldwide have historically, on the whole, been supported — if not demanded — by the government of the United States of America. Yet it is an undeniable fact that this American-driven international consensus has begun to fray in recent years. Various nations began to back away from the American model of punitive prohibition: Uruguay, for example, over the course of 2013 and 2014 decriminalised possession of cannabis for personal use (with no limit on the amount that could be possessed) and legalised the growing of marijuana plants by individuals. Individual jurisdictions within the United States, such as Colorado and Washington, also began to decriminalise and regulate the sale and consumption of cannabis within their own state borders.

However, Lamb's claim that in the UK a "legalised regulated market makes a lot of sense" does not capture just how astonishingly backward the position of the British government appeared in 2016. A "legalised regulated market" like that adopted by Colorado is primarily one in which cannabis can be sold and consumed for recreational purposes. But recreation is — historically and in the present moment — not the only or primary reason to consume cannabis. Although the issue has been subject to debate — perhaps unfairly and tendentiously, as part of an effort to justify what in 2016 looks like a moribund regime of total prohibition — cannabis is widely recognised to have medicinal value as well. Indeed, the vast majority of speakers in the 12 October 2015 parliamentary debate raised this issue with reference to anecdotes from constituents, if not from personal experience, in order to make the point that medicinal cannabis was currently unavailable due to the United Kingdom's policy of blanket prohibition, which makes the government's position seem even more indefensible.

Reynolds (2015) notes that "medicinal cannabis is now available on prescription in Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain," and combined with the various types of medical access available in large parts of the United States, "currently more than 500 million people in the 'First World' have legal access to medicinal cannabis. The UK is notable for its failure to give any serious consideration to such reform since 1998, despite reasonable estimates of up to one million British people using cannabis for medicinal purposes" (4). The question of why the United Kingdom should be so stubborn in its adherence to a policy of total prohibition becomes even more glaring when one considers this context. One is tempted to wonder if it reflects a blind adherence to some kind of Victorian moralism — except that, in the case of cannabis, to call the present British policy of total prohibition "Victorian" is actually an insult to the Victorians: as Curran and Warburton (2015) among others have noted, in the nineteenth century cannabis was "widely available in the UK and cannabis tincture was prescribed to Queen Victoria for period pains and during childbirth" (3). It is somewhat remarkable to think that, if Queen Victoria were to step out of a TARDIS into the London of 2016 and feel a twinge of royal discomfort, she would risk prosecution for possession of a Class C drug for simply taking as medicine what the royal physicians had prescribed for her legally and in good faith.