The tide effect

For decades, cannabis has been discussed largely in terms of criminality, bracketed with heroin and cocaine simply by being on the wrong side of the law. This is, at last, beginning to change. The general acceptance that the war on drugs in its current form has failed has pushed forward initiatives to legalise cannabis in several countries across the world. So far the UK continues to lag behind, still wedded – officially, at least – to the idea that cannabis remains a matter for criminal prohibition rather than public health.

The Tide Effect argues that the legalisation of cannabis in the UK is both overdue and imperative. Attempts to control consumption through prohibition do not work and have not done so for many decades. The health issues surrounding cannabis – for like all drugs, alcohol and tobacco included, it is not harmless, and no serious advocate for legal reform would suggest that it is – are left largely unexplored because the substance’s illegality makes meaningful long-term scientific tests difficult to carry out.

The advantages of a properly regulated market providing tax revenues, strict product parameters and health advice far outweigh the disadvantages of such a move. That cannabis is illegal while alcohol and tobacco are not is an accident of history. Cannabis policy reform is not a daring step forwards so much as a righting of historical wrongs, a reversion to what the drug’s status should always have been, had it been treated impartially.

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