Cannabis: should it be decriminalised?

Over recent years, more than 30 countries, including Portugal and Germany, and numerous US states, have either decriminalised or fully legalised recreational cannabis use. Is it time London joined them? The city's mayor, Sadiq Khan, believes so, said Esther Addley in The Guardian.

Last week he endorsed the findings of his London Drugs Commission, led by the Labour peer Charlie Falconer, which recommended that the possession of small amounts of natural cannabis should be decriminalised (under the proposed change, those producing or supplying the drug would still be breaking the law).

The current rules, said the report, were wasting police officers' time and souring police-community relations. Black people are four times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, according to 2024 figures, but are no more likely to be carrying cannabis. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, poured cold water on the proposal, saying the Government had no plans to relax the laws on cannabis.

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In practice, most cannabis offences have already been "quietly decriminalised" in parts of the country, said Tom Calver in The Sunday Times. In the Thames Valley, just 9% of those caught with the drug end up being charged; in Norfolk, by contrast, about a third do. Whether it's worth formalising that policy, though, is a moot question.

In 2001, the commander of Lambeth police, Brian Paddick, briefly ran an experiment by empowering his officers to let off everyone caught with small amounts of cannabis with a caution. The policy saved thousands of hours of police time on processing arrests, enabling officers to focus on more dangerous drugs, but "as dealers flooded the borough, the number of cannabis offences actually rose by a third". A follow-up study concluded that the "total welfare of local residents likely fell" during the period.

As an NHS psychiatrist who witnesses on a daily basis the damage done by cannabis, I think Khan is mad to want to ease the law, said Max Pemberton in the Daily Mail. The drug is to blame for about a third of psychosis cases in the capital, according to one study.

If we're going to ease the law, let's go the whole hog and legalise cannabis. That would at least allow the drug to be taxed and regulated, and its level of potency to be kept in check. But Khan's solution represents the worst of all worlds. By keeping cannabis illegal, while making clear that people would face no penalties for taking it, it would merely breed contempt for the law.