Britain | Cannabis cultivation

The other green belt

The authorities are taking a more relaxed attitude to cannabis growers

BY THE time police were called to look at “a few cannabis plants” in a wasteland in south-west London, the site played host to a forest five feet high and the area of a football pitch. Officers cordoned it off on September 25th, with what sounded almost like a touch of regret for the gardeners. “All their time, trouble and gardening skills”, said Sarah Henderson, a police constable, “will go unrewarded.”

It takes a lot for marijuana growers to attract police attention these days. In July four forces—Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham and Surrey—declared that they would henceforth respond only to tip-offs and “blatant” weed use. Many other forces have also scaled things down, albeit quietly, according to Steve Rolles of Transform, a drug-policy think-tank.

This is partly due to a lack of resources: the police budget has been cut by 25% in the past five years, and constables haven’t the time to go looking for those with “a couple of plants at home”, says Alan Charles, Derbyshire’s elected police commissioner. Many forces have anyway long been sceptical about the value of prosecuting low-level drug offenders. Pressing on with an ineffective war on drugs is “bonkers”, says Mr Charles.

Slacker policing has coincided with a rise over the past five years of cannabis “social clubs” in Britain. There are now around 80 of these non-profit organisations. Cultivating and possessing the drug are criminal offences in Britain, and most clubs describe themselves as campaigning organisations. “It’s not illegal to talk about weed,” says Greg de Hoedt, the president of United Kingdom Cannabis Social Clubs (UKCSC), an umbrella group. But some chapters’ members hint heavily that they are involved in growing; UKCSC’s website acknowledges that some clubs “are simply there to look after their needs and remove themselves from artificial and unnecessary economical chains”.

The social-club movement has migrated from Spain, where there are estimated to be some 400 such clubs. There, cultivation for personal use is legal, and in some regions clubs are formally licensed and regulated. Spain is the model that British pot activists want to replicate, says Gary Potter of Lancaster University.

What will be the consequences of a looser approach in Britain? Not necessarily a boom in consumption: a recent Home Office briefing found no link between the strictness of countries’ drug laws and the extent of drug use. Since 2000 the proportion of young Britons using cannabis has almost halved. And cannabis clubs have some positive side-effects. In Spain, people are shunning drug dealers in favour of collectives, who deal in cheaper, better-quality cannabis, monitor potency, ration supply and ban under-18s. In Colorado, one of four American legal-weed states, criminals’ market share has fallen to an estimated 40%, the rest being supplied by legitimate businesses.

There are hints that some British cannabis clubs are having a similar, albeit much smaller, effect. Mr de Hoedt says many club members mention, on joining, that they will stop buying weed off the street. “The way they can minimise paying money into the criminal market is to grow collectively,” says Tom Lloyd, a former chief constable of Cambridgeshire police. That is no bad thing. Unlike small-scale, amateur growers in social clubs, commercial cannabis operations worry police. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has warned that trafficked youngsters are roped into organised pot-farming. The rise of potent “skunk” cannabis is also driven by these unsavoury enterprises, says Mr Lloyd (though Colorado’s experience suggests licensed producers develop stronger varieties still).

Britain’s cannabis clubs exist in a legal twilight, which curbs their growth and means the weed market is still dominated by criminal gangs. On October 12th Parliament will debate a rare motion to legalise the drug. Dealers will be relieved to hear that it has no chance of passing.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "The other green belt"

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