A new report claims the UK government should legalise marijuana because it’s “the only solution to crime and addiction problems”.
According to the institute, the UK’s current drug strategy “has failed in its core aims to prevent people from using drugs, manufacturing drugs, and to put a stop to the crime, corruption and death that is taking place on an industrial scale around the world”.
The report claims legalisation would reduce organised crime, improve the quality (and therefore safety) of cannabis and line the coffers of the Treasury; a legal UK cannabis industry, it calculates, would turn over £6.8 billion annually, with £1 billion going straight to the Treasury.
A number of countries have had a rethink on cannabis in recent years.
Portugal decriminalised all drugs in 2001 and within a decade substance abuse was reported to have halved – though that’s not to say the drop-off in drug taking was directly down to the policy.
Uruguay has adopted a similar approach – it legalised marijuana in 2013 – while California, Massachusetts and Nevada recently became the latest US states to vote for legalisation of the drug.
Though cannabis is not actually legal in the Netherlands, it can be widely consumed in the country’s infamous coffeeshops. However, despite the ubiquity of the drug, Dutch citizens are not the world’s biggest tokers: according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), that dubious distinction goes to Iceland.
Top 30 cannabis consuming countries
- Iceland – 18.3% (prevalence of use as percentage of population)
- US – 16.2%
- Nigeria – 14.3%
- Canada – 12.7%
- Chile – 11.83%
- France – 11.1%
- New Zealand – 11%
- Bermuda – 10.9%
- Australia – 10.2%
- Zambia – 9.5%
- Uruguay – 9.3%
- Spain – 9.2%
- Italy – 9.2%
- Madagascar – 9.1%
- Czech Republic – 8.9%
- Israel – 8.88%
- St Lucia – 8.87%
- Belize – 8.45%
- Barbados – 8.3%
- Netherlands – 8%
- Greenland – 7.6%
- Jamaica – 7.21%
- Denmark – 6.9%
- Switzerland – 6.7%
- Egypt – 6.24%
- UK – 6.2%
- Ireland – 6%
- Estonia – 6%
- Bahamas – 5.54%
- Sierra Leone – 5.42%
The UNODC’s data suggests that cannabis is used by 18.3 per cent of Iceland’s population (aged 15-64). The US (16.2 per cent) and Nigeria (14.3 per cent) had the second and third highest rates of consumption; the UK came 26th on the list, followed by Ireland. And the Netherlands? It came 20th.
Data is not available for all of the world’s countries – and some figures have been updated more recently than others – meaning caution should be exercised when drawing comparisons.
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