Peter Reynolds

The whole premise of ‘not for profit’ cannabis reform is misguided. For decades, governments have gifted the huge profit opportunity in cannabis to organised crime. Now they want to deny legitimate business the opportunity.

We live in a market economy. Profit is not a dirty word in any other market. In fact profit creates jobs and puts food on families’ tables. The only people who object to profit are ideological socialists and naïve academics who don’t live in the real world.

But closet prohibitionists claim that a market in cannabis, regulated like any other consumer product, will result in aggressive marketing and greed-driven peddling of drugs to vulnerable people. Even some involved in cannabis reform share this fear. The jargon of ‘corporate capture’ and similar hyperbolic criticism supports an anti-business agenda which misses the key purpose of reform – that cannabis and its consumption must be reintegrated into society as ‘normal’. It is the demonisation of cannabis and its prohibition that has caused so much harm. Not just by the persecution of consumers but the consequential effects of creating a multi-billion-pound criminal market.     

It is essential that reform enables cannabis to be produced and sold just like any other product, with appropriate regulations, just as we apply to tobacco, alcohol and OTC medicines. If we don’t let legitimate business trade in it, we invite organised crime and irresponsible actors to continue to dominate supply with all the harm that causes.                                       

The EU is one of the main protagonists in trying to keep business out of cannabis. Just look at the problems Malta is experiencing. Already it has had three people in charge of its regulation authority, the first two with a history of opposing reform and they had so much difficulty appointing a replacement that the latest is the prime minister’s brother-in-law! Its preferred solution of cannabis social clubs is in chaos. After three years there are only 2,000 people registered as members and the bureaucracy is overwhelming, threatening the clubs’ viability.  

Germany wanted to move forward with a legally regulated commercial supply chain but the EU knocked it back, insisting on the cannabis social club model. It too is experiencing great problems with administering this vastly complicated approach.

Malta, Luxembourg and Germany also provide for limited personal cultivation and this is a very good thing. Germany intends to move forward with pilot schemes for commercial supply but these are yet to get off the ground. The Czech Republic is next in line for reform and it is certainly trying to stand up to the EU but it may yet be knocked back into the social club model as well.

Cannabis social clubs were invented as a way of circumventing prohibition in jurisdictions where individuals growing plants for personal use was not banned. The idea was simply that group of individuals were clubbing together. I don’t have any objection if that is what people want to do but the idea that these clubs are the solution to organised crime production is nonsense. In fact, they are the perfect cover for organised crime.

While growing two or three cannabis plants is not difficult, once you move up to a dozen or more it becomes much more complex and demanding. Without the profit opportunity, weighed down with onerous regulation, the risk of losing a large harvest is too much. I cannot see that social clubs will ever be a solution. They can only be a minor component of a system of regulation that must include commercial supply.

The solution is easy to see on the other side of the Atlantic in Canada and in most of the legal, adult-use US states. California is an outlier where greedy politicians have made a terrible mess with levels of taxation that have continued to promote and support criminal production. Mind you, problematic as it is, no one in California is talking about going backwards!

Canada is a roaring, delightful success. Latest government data show that 82% of all purchases are now made through legal channels. After just six years this is a complete vindication of legalisation, of the sensible, logical approach that permits grow-your-own, prescription by doctors (it’s called ‘authorisation’ in Canada) and a legally regulated supply chain with licensed producers and retailers.

The pious, timid belief that cannabis must be provided on a not for profit basis is grounded in prohibition and that is where it should remain: repealed, abandoned, a relic of prejudice and historical failure.