Should cannabis be legal? By 54 per cent to 32 per cent, British people think small amounts for personal use should be decriminalised, according to a YouGov poll conducted last week (Times and Sunday Times subscribers, it should be said, leaned the other way: 54-46 against).
The issue has also split the Labour Party. Last week a report by Lord Falconer of Thoroton suggested natural cannabis should be removed from the Misuse of Drugs Act, a move backed by the mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan. Within hours Angela Rayner had duly ruled out relaxing the rules.
Yet what exactly are the rules? And how exactly are they enforced?
As things stand, on paper, cannabis is a class B drug, so even possession for personal use carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Some would have gone further: in 2022 Suella Braverman, who was home secretary, considered upgrading it to class A.
Two decades ago the Labour government briefly knocked it down to class C. Back then the drug was considerably more popular than it is now, particularly among young adults. In 1997 surveys found 28 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds had smoked cannabis in the previous year, compared with just 14 per cent today.
And yet, although there has been no change in the drug’s classification since 2009, there has been a quiet but fundamental shift in how cannabis is policed.
Ten years ago a quarter of cannabis possession offences resulted in a criminal charge (in most cases a fine was imposed — only 271 out of 11,000 sentences were immediate custodial ones). Most of those caught were given informal warnings, penalty notices or police cautions.
But since the late 2010s forces have been increasingly using “community resolutions” to police cannabis. In a nutshell, if a person admits responsibility, and it is the first time they have been caught, they get away with certain conditions. The resolution is basically an informal agreement in which the offender might agree to refer themselves to local support services for substance abuse, or say they’ll read information pamphlets about how cannabis can ruin your future. In practice these resolutions are voluntary: there is usually no way of knowing if the offender does not comply.
Half of cannabis offences are now being dealt with this way, and a further quarter are closed because there is insufficient evidence or pursuing them is deemed not in the public interest. In other words, most cannabis offences have been quietly decriminalised.
One problem with this softer, discretionary approach to cannabis is that it is not being applied uniformly. Weed-smokers are best off living in the Thames Valley, where 73 per cent of those caught with the drug end up with a community resolution; charge rates are just 9 per cent.
But a hundred miles away in Norfolk police are less forgiving. About 33 per cent of those caught with cannabis end up being charged, and a further 13 per cent cautioned.
On the whole, though, given how much more lenient the police are becoming towards cannabis possession, it is surprising how many offences are still being logged. The total number of cannabis possession offences recorded by police, 92,500 last year, is nearly a fifth higher than in 2015. Figures actually soared during the Covid pandemic.
Processing cannabis offences is time-consuming: in Essex dedicated officers have even taken to nurturing captured cannabis plants in a special warehouse to ensure the evidence is not damaged! Should we not spare police the paperwork and legalise the drug?
The controversial truth is that the illegal status of cannabis has been found to be quite useful for the police. According to the latest Home Office stop-and-search figures, roughly 50 per cent of searches conducted were on suspicion of drugs. Yet just 38 per cent of arrests resulting from stop and search were for drugs. In other words, a significant chunk of those searched for drug-related reasons ended up being arrested for other reasons.
Or, as some police chiefs see it, about 17 per cent of the firearms and 21 per cent of the offensive weapons that were caught through stop and search were found only because officers thought to look for drugs. Never mind that stop and search is a blunt instrument, and that just 12 per cent of drug-related searches lead to an arrest: that is still a lot of knives and guns taken off the street.
Police have been repeatedly warned against making arrests based solely on the smell of cannabis alone. Yet the data suggests police are using the suspicion of drug use as a means to look for other things too.
While few may have a problem with the principle of private, personal cannabis use, history offers a cautionary tale of the spillover effects of legalisation. In 2001 Brian Paddick, who was commander of Lambeth police, ran an experiment in which anyone caught carrying a small amount of the drug was given a warning instead of being charged or fined. It saved police time and enabled them to focus on more dangerous drugs — yet as dealers flooded the borough, the number of cannabis offences actually rose by a third.
A follow-up study by researchers at University College London concluded that during the period the “total welfare of local residents likely fell” and the area became less desirable: the average house sold after the policy was introduced, they found, went for £9,400 less than it would have done.
