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WillowOne's Positions

Cannabis

My Positions

  1. I believe that cannabis should be legal for adults, with appropriate regulation and protections.
  2. Cannabis is no more harmful than many substances already legal in society, such as alcohol or tobacco, and by most measures it is considerably less harmful than either.
  3. It has demonstrable benefits for well-being and recognised applications in medicine, including the treatment of chronic pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea, spasticity in multiple sclerosis, and certain forms of childhood epilepsy.
  4. Criminalisation has not prevented its widespread use. Around a third of UK adults report having used it, and it is the most widely used illegal drug in the country.
  5. Its illegality enables and sustains criminal enterprise through unregulated markets, and funds organised crime.
  6. Without legal status, there are no consumer protections, safety standards, labelling, or quality control. Users do not know the strength or purity of what they are buying, and the illegal market has shifted towards high-THC, low-CBD strains that carry greater mental health risk precisely because they are more profitable per gram smuggled.
  7. Legalisation would enable more effective, evidence-based public health guidance, and would allow problem use to be treated as a health matter rather than a criminal one.
  8. A regulated cannabis market would provide economic benefits through taxation and legitimate employment, and would free police and court time for matters that actually harm people.
  9. Criminalisation does real harm to real people. A criminal record for possession can cost a young person their education, employment, and ability to travel, which is a disproportionate response to an act that harms no one else.

Notes

  1. Cannabis is not harmless. Heavy use, particularly of high-potency strains, is associated with an increased risk of psychosis in those predisposed to it, with dependence in a minority of users, and with impaired cognitive development when used heavily in adolescence. These are reasons for regulation, age limits, potency labelling, and honest public health messaging. They are not reasons for prohibition, any more than the harms of alcohol are. Prohibition makes every one of these harms worse by removing the possibility of regulating them.
  2. The evidence from jurisdictions that have legalised (Canada in 2018, Uruguay in 2013, Germany in 2024, and a majority of US states) does not show the increase in youth use, road deaths, or crime that opponents predicted. It does show a collapse in the illegal market and substantial tax revenue.
  3. The UK legalised cannabis for medical use in November 2018, but access through the NHS has been so restricted that almost all medical users still obtain it through private clinics or illegally. This is the worst of both arrangements.
  4. The classification of cannabis as a Class B drug (it was briefly Class C between 2004 and 2009) is a political decision, not a scientific one. The government's own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended against reclassification to B in 2008 and was overruled. Professor David Nutt, the council's chair, was dismissed in 2009 for pointing out publicly that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol.

Personal Context

  • I have smoked cannabis a small number of times as a teenager.
  • I am not now, and have never been, someone who could reasonably be described as a "cannabis user".
  • I might engage in it recreationally were it to become legal in this country.
  • I might engage in it recreationally in countries where it is legal.

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