There was recently a story in the UK news about a woman trying to bring cannabis oil into the country, she was bringing the cannabis oil in as medication for her epileptic son who reportedly had up to 100 fits a day before using the cannabis oil. The mother was bringing a six month supply of medication that was seized as she landed in the country which has sparked up the debate around legalizing cannabis.
The mother is now trying to speak to the home secretary to discus the use of medical cannabis and how it will be detrimental to her sons well being to take away his medication. The position of the UK government on cannabis is a strange one as it is seen as highly illegal being a class B drug and growing just one plant can get you up to a 14 year prison sentence. However the UK is relatively wishy-washy when it comes to cannabis because although it is illegal there are areas such a Derbyshire, Dorset and Surrey where in 2015 police were told to be more lax on recreational or medical users.
There was even a man in Surrey who was found growing several large cannabis plants and he was not punished and he was even allowed to keep growing the plants as it was for personal use, in the areas above mentioned when police come across cannabis smokers in public they usually just tell them to not smoke in public and that is that they often don't even bother confiscating the drug. However the stance on dealers did not change and any people thought to be dealing cannabis will still be prosecuted in the same way.
Since these changes in 2015 I have noticed a lot less young people being stopped by police or being taken into police stations and I think it has been a massively positive thing to almost decriminalize recreational cannabis in the above mentioned areas because it creates a better relationship between the police and the public which in my opinion is much needed as many people feel the police only bring fear where they go rather than safety. It has also given police more time to work on catching what I would call real criminals because there is so much time saved one not having to spend the time searching and questioning people along with having to do all the paperwork involved.
The government however for the most part is still very anti cannabis, recreational or medical use, which can be frustrating although as more stories like this are in the news where people are hugely helped by cannabis products it becomes hard to ignore the medical benefits of the plant and some politicians are starting to push for reform.
Personally I would like to see cannabis become legalized in the UK for medical and recreational use and with similar laws to alcohol for the recreational side. I think serious though needs to go into making reform for medical purposes because at this point it is absurd to deny the medical benefits of cannabis as there are many examples of the benefits in countries that have legalized the medical use.
What is holding the government back:
Even with all the information available and the fact that we have had years to observe other countries legalizing cannabis and the good and bad that can come from that the UK government still seems like they don't want to make any change even though it is something that is widely asked for by the public with multiple petitions being made most years that get hundreds of thousands of signatures all to no avail.
I think there are many things holding the UK back from legalizing cannabis and I don't see a lot of those things changing soon. Firstly and one of the most important sides of the argument are costs, legalizing cannabis in the UK will not be a cheap or quick task, it will take a lot of planing and a lot of important decisions will need to be made.
One of the main areas to look at within the cost is the NHS, if cannabis was legalized in the UK for medical use it would become a medicine which would mean the NHS would have to give the drugs to patients for free or at a low cost (in comparison to other places). The NHS would have large supply and demand issues because as we have seen in many other places people will claim ailments so that they can get legal access to cannabis and there would be a huge number of people wanting cannabis related treatments which would mean needing large quantities of cannabis. Even if the plant as a whole wasn't sold as medication they would still need to make medications from the plant which means growing huge amounts, having places to grow huge amounts and then having places to make the actual medication. This all comes with a big price tag to an already struggling NHS.
On the other side those cost could be filled by the taxation on the plant or any related product of the plant, however the cost on the NHS will be immediate and the tax will be something that comes in over time, so although the tax could be worth it in the long run and profits could be made of the taxation of the plant you would still have the initial hit of huge costs to build the initial infrastructure which would put a lot of people off the legalization, medical or recreational.
Like any drug cannabis has effects that are positive and effects that are negative and the negative effects can put people off wanting the drug to be legal because with the drug being legal more people would have access to it, therefor more people could suffer from the negative effects. However a lot of the negative effects of cannabis come if the person taking cannabis is young and still going through vital brain development and if it was legal people would be able to become better educated about the negative effects and it would stop young people having such easy access to the drug because they could put an age limit on any sales like with alcohol or cigarettes, as currently the legality doesn't put many young people off smoking and the people that sell the drug often don't have an issue with supplying to people in the early teens.
I also feel that one of the main things stopping the legalization in the UK is the viewpoint of cannabis being a nasty even evil drug that ruins lives and so on, but I find it crazy that people can have a stance like this on cannabis but then be fine with alcohol or even a vast amount of other legal drugs that can ruin lives and that can have hugely bad effects on people but anything being misused or over used can become an issue it is not like cannabis is something extraordinary or nasty is is just another plant that has effects like many others.