Sadiq Khan calls for partial decriminalisation of cannabis possession…
 

London Drugs Commission also found disproportionate use of stop-and-search powers in black communities

Sadiq Khan has backed calls for the partial decriminalisation of cannabis possession, as a wide-ranging study suggests the way the drug is policed causes greater harm to society than its usage.

In particular, it found, the use of stop-and-search powers disproportionately affects black communities.

“I’ve long been clear that we need fresh thinking on how to reduce the substantial harms associated with drug-related crime in our communities,” the London mayor said on Wednesday.

He added that the report said the “current sentencing for those caught in possession of natural cannabis cannot be justified given its relative harm and people’s experience of the justice system”.

The independent London Drugs Commission, which has produced the report a year after being set up by Khan, stressed it was not promoting the blanket legalisation of cannabis. Rather, its central recommendation was that possession of small quantities of natural cannabis for personal use should no longer be criminalised.

The production and distribution of the drug should still be tackled by police, it said. And it explicitly excluded synthetic cannabis from its decriminalisation calls.

The commissioners, led by the former justice secretary Lord Falconer KC, worked with academics from University College London to gather evidence from more than 200 experts and academics from around the world.

They found that making cannabis a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act is “disproportionate to the harms it can pose relative to other drugs controlled by the act”.

The researchers said: “The sentencing options currently available, especially for personal possession, cannot be justified when balanced against the longer-term impacts of experience of the justice system, including stop and search, or of serving a criminal sentence can have on a person.”

They added that policing of the drug focuses on certain ethnic communities – particularly the black community – “creating damaging, long-lasting consequences for individuals, wider society, and police-community relations”.

While they found potential short-term benefits in legalisation, such as tax revenues and reductions in criminalisation, they stressed that the “extent of harms, particularly with respect to public health, as well as personal and societal costs, take longer to emerge and are not yet well understood”.

The researchers said greater focus needed to be placed on helping the minority whose use becomes problematic, noting that cannabis can be addictive. “Those who suffer from the adverse effects of cannabis, which may be a small percentage of users but is a high number of people, need reliable, consistent medical and other support.”

Further, they said education about cannabis was inadequate, failing to “acknowledge drivers of use” and – particularly where younger people are concerned – being “led by providers who lack sufficient credibility and insight”.

Falconer said: “It is clear that a fundamental reset is required. Legalisation is not the answer. The criminal justice system response needs to focus only on the dealers and not the users … And there needs to be much more education on the risks of cannabis use.”

Khan said the report made recommendations to which authorities in both City Hall and Westminster needed to pay attention.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We will continue to work with partners across health, policing and wider public services to drive down drug use, ensure more people receive timely treatment and support and make our streets and communities safer. We have no intention of reclassifying cannabis from a Class B substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...bis-possession

A very good step in the right direction, but it does need to be legalised and eventually taxed when grown and sold responsibly as a business

No bad idea

It could be a good starting point on this issue.
Worthy of support.

I do though agree with all that Liam has said on this issue.

I don't have a problem with it. But to claim it would help police/ethnic relations is laughable. We're all bound by the same laws.

That won’t work
Legal cannabis will be more expensive than illegal stuff

Yes but that's also true of bootleg tobacco/vapes/alcohol... but 99% of what's consumed is the more expensive retail version. It'll be the same with this (if it happens).

Legalise/decriminalise it fully.

I've never taken cannabis in my life. I've drank booze. Lots of it. Not any more though. :)

But drugs, nope. I hear lots of people saying you can smell cannabis a mile off. Well, I couldn't tell you what it smells like. My friends have never taken it either. :p

I don't agree that it should be legalised. I've heard some horror stories about young people going insane after years of taking it, and yes it is a gateway.

Just like booze is a gateway to stronger booze, from wine to vodka.

A lot of mental imbalance comes from not enough CBD (and other ‘mellowing entourage cannabinoids’) in the fray to balance out some of the potential negatives of too much unmitigated THC. Ignorance about cannabis and the best way to optimise the experience does more harm than the plant itself. And even at that, even on the black market, it’s never directly caused someone to fatally overdose, not if it isn’t spiced with synthetics, whereas alcohol does about a trillion times the damage cannabis ever could. Prisons would be less populated and violent crime (from domestic abuse to random knifing) would be down if alcohol didn’t exist.

Skunk smells? Let’s go the same way nicotine’s gone, then, and have everyone vape it instead. Case closed. End of story there.

All-in-all, alcohol is a far, far, far more potentially destructive and poisonous drug than cannabis could ever be. That’s just a fact. Being anti-weed while you sit in the pub with a pint every evening or down a bottle of wine whenever your kids are stressing you out is nothing other than sheer hypocrisy. All the arguments against weed are all-the-more reason to legalise (or at-least decriminalise) it and break ignorance and stereotypes against it. It hasn’t broken Canada, Thailand, Portugal or Holland. It won’t break a nation of hypocritical piss-heads either.

I would support that being done too definitely.

Absolutely.

There’s just no reason for it to continue to be illegal when two of the most potentially harmful vices in alcohol and tobacco (which rank second only to heroin in some respects)have been legalised for a long time. Alcohol’s more embedded in the culture but that doesn’t make it better, just less stigmatised and marginalised.

Prohibition doesn’t protect society. It just fuels stigma, ignorance and criminalisation of peace and introspection. Side-by-side the pot-bellied bloke who beats his wife and gets barred from the pub after one-too-many Stellas and consequent gropings, I don’t see what’s so bad about vaping some green/applying a cream for pain-relief and bodily homeostasis, getting artistic and listening to psychology podcasts over bumbleberry pie. The over-embedment of alcohol in society comes at the cost of addiction, delirium-tremens, alcoholic hallucinosis/paranoia (which is conveniently swept under the carpet compared to weed-induced paranoia), rape, violence, broken families, lost jobs, bloated healthcare systems (especially in A&E on Friday/Saturday night) and liver-damage.

ITV1HD London News last night,
concluded the Government will not allow this,
The cannabis idea to
Not go ahead


Many youths are in a comatose state.
No one wants that.

I accept, medically, cannibus can be a substantial benefit for those suffering from debilitating diseases like Parkinson's. There's a few videos out there which shows a man who couldn't hold a cup of tea without its contents spilling all over the floor, he takes cannibus for medical reasons and his shakes stop completely. Quite remarkable. In those cases cannibus is a wonder 'drug'. :)

Even recreationally. Why criminalise peace, introspection, heightened creativity and munchies?

I'm not against this, I kind of thought it had been going by the stench of it when you walk around London. What I am against us Kahn, a loud voice surrounding mental health issues, yet willing to allow the young to legally smoke weed.

Black communities they say..people are stopped and searched for drugs all over the countey. They are white in white communities and black in black communities, so he can shut up about that as well.

I think Khan made the statement about cannabis to try to bury the news that he is raising the congestion charge by an eye-watering 20%. He's a stinker...

I take it from this, that Khan has been tooting on the mary-joanna.

He should be publicly drug-tested.

Yh I defo feel he’s trying to divert attention away from that. I also heard on the news earlier that the Silvertown tunnel is closing for 17 nights for maintenance work. It’s been open not even 2 months and it’s already closing for maintenance and this cost how much to build? Absolute joke.

The right decision
They want to get people to stop smoking so making it legal to smoke sh1t would be destroying all the hard work that’s been done by stopping people smoking around none smokers

Humans don’t need to smoke to survive

I smoke it from time to time. I don't smoke it as much as I did in my younger days. But if ones getting passed around, I'll have a toot. Just to be sociable.

I don't think it should be legalised. I see the case for it but I think the Cons outweigh the pros.

It's proven, that it can cause schizophrenia in people. That can't be good.

So let them vape it rather than smoke it. Humans have used cannabis for thousands of years.

And killing other humans
We don’t need that smelly sh1t being openly smoked in public