Cannabis should not be decriminalised - AIBU?

[Alwaysoneoddsock]

I hate the smell of cannabis. It’s becoming the norm to smell it. I think decriminalising this drug will make it more prolific.
It is a gateway drug.
It does not help mental health (in fact it worsens it).
People driving under the influence of cannabis is a real issue.
AIBU to say it should not be decriminalised?

Very different country with a very different culture, but ok. Has Canada noticed a big increase in international drug dealers updating their CVs? Street dealers signing up for job training? Portugal doesn’t seem to have.

Has Canada disclosed how they’re getting that 75% figure? Assuming that those people who aren’t buying it legally aren’t likely to be forthcoming about it. Are they also measuring increases in other illegal drugs?

I do agree that decriminalisation would solve some issues. I just think it would create a load of different ones, particularly for people like me and @JenniferBooth who don’t have the luxury of living in an area where we don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis.

Do tell what you mean by, "The PIP crowd"...

Housing Associations are increasingly designating properties as "non-smoking", which should make evictions far easier and give the HA much greater incentive to enforce (and expose the HA to liability from other residents if they fail to enforce).

In terms of suing, I'm thinking home owners, not tenants (as per the scenario in the link JenniferBooth provided). If someone owns a home, there's assets available to satisfy a judgment, if matters get that far.

Which successive governments have added more and more restrictions on.

If new drugs came on the market which caused as much harm as tobacco and alcohol, they would be banned. These are legacy drugs and we shouldn’t use them as an example of what to do going forward.

They are but when it comes to cannabis smoke my HO told me they cant do anything because they cant work out which flat its coming from.

@bombastix

Yes, they are anti social. A few of them make their money legally (seriously, go to an Asda kiosk at 7 am and smell the young lads dressed in hi visi vests and hard hats when they’re buying tobacco. Take a deep breath and tell me what you smell). Some of them make their money by burgling your houses. And many of them make their money by dealing. What are they going to deal if weed is legalised or decriminalised? Because they’re anti social enough that they aren’t suddenly going to become productive members of society. So they’ll either look for a way to under cut legal suppliers (which is going to have a bigger impact on some very vulnerable people) or they’ll deal skunk, or they’ll deal harder drugs.

It doesn’t matter what you legalise. Dealers are not going to go away. And unless you’re one of the aforementioned privileged Guardian reading, Shein boycotting smokers, they’ll carry on buying their weed in the cheapest place they can get it.

But weed isn't a new drug. It's been around for decades, we know that people aren't going to stop using it and we know that driving it underground hasn't worked.

Where people can't buy alcohol, they make their own and poison or blind others. Where it's legal, we make drinks that have controlled levels of alcohol, we have broadly observed rules about who can consume it and we tax, tax, tax it. And, broadly speaking, it works.

Imagine this. Some poor tenant goes to a job interview reeking of their neighbours weed. Doesnt get the job The employer informs the Job Centre that they reeked of weed. Sanctioned!!!

What you are saying is that these people are drug dealers and they won’t do anything productive. But legislation would solve a number of problems, just not these people. They are what they are. The status of cannabis as a drug won’t make a difference. Is that a reason to do nothing about the other issues that surround it, like spending money on enforcement that costs a fortune, instead of spending on social provisions and health to make some less likely to waste their lives? Guardian readers aren’t the issue, it’s your horrible neighbours

It absolutely reeks . I know some people have it for health reasons but wish they could have it in tablet or patch form as the stench really is a plague on our public spaces and even gardens / own homes if neighbours smoke the putrid stuff. It should not be decriminalised. People should be arrested for smoking or carrying unless have prescription for tablet form

I agree OP. It’s revolting stuff. It stinks. Even if it’s decriminalised it will still be part of organized crime.

I know loads of people can use it with no ill effects but it can mess people up.

Most, if not all, heroin addicts will have drunk alcohol before using heroin. Is it a gateway drug too?
How many fires are started by drunk people? Much more crime committed due to alcohol use than heroin or marijuana.

Do you have much experience with HAs? Because I can promise you that them designating properties as non smoking, and them actually doing anything about it are two very different things.

And re the suing, I get your point, but the sort of people who smoke enough to create enough of a smell to cover an entire estate tend not to be the sort of people who own their own homes.

It goes back to the age old thing of money I suppose. If you have enough of it, you can make these declarations about things that you don’t have to live in the middle of, safe in the knowledge that if/when it all goes tits up, you’ll be sat in your garden on a lovely summers afternoon with only the smell of cut grass and the occasional bbq to bother you. While @JenniferBooth and I are praying it rains so we can have our windows open for an hour without getting the munchies.

That would be a bit tragic but I don't think employers generally contact job centers about candidates.

This is the system we have now. It is not working and we have given it a good go since 1971. When I did criminal law 25 plus years ago people routinely went to prison for possession. It made zero difference and offending has gone up and up.

I think people don’t have experience of this, and often don’t believe it happens. It’s a poor place for policy.

Yes it sucks and sends a wrong signal making more youngsters that less experienced in life think it is ok and not harmful, before too late. As prescription meds, sure, so? Morphine is prescribed meds too and so does chemotherapy. Anyone claims no harm to healthy human just because it’s prescription meds at the right situations?

Tea? Most heroin addicts drank tea before moving onto heroin. It's a gateway drug.

It’s precisely because my horrible neighbours are who they are, that I don’t think legislation will solve the problems you think it will.

Rhetorical question, but how many weed dealers do you think are in the UK? I’m talking about the people who use it to pay for their own habit. And how many more smokers who buy from them who don’t deal but smoke enough to be stinking of it when you walk past them in the street? You legalise or decriminalise weed and what do you think they’re going to do? It’s possible that they could give up and take up knitting instead. It’s far more likely that they will under cut or deal skunk instead. As you say, they are what they are.

People like @Burntt might be willing to pay over the odds for the knowledge that their drug of choice comes from a reputable source, but I somehow doubt she’s smoking it to the point where she needs to buy it as cheaply as possible. And people like Burntt are outnumbered by people like my horrible neighbours by 50 to 1. It’s naive to think otherwise.

Yes it is and anyone working on drug and alcohol services will tell you that.

Anything that can cause 'passive' effects on those who made no choice to be effected by it, e.g. inhaling smoke..... should be 100% illegal. The story of Roy Castle dying of lung cancer caused by passive smoking stands out as a clear example.

So, yes, count me in for criminalising tobacco too.

While living in our old place we had downstairs neighbours who would smoke weed during the summer, when all windows were open.... while our infant DD slept. Just abominable.

I disagree that Canada as a whole (Quebec excepted) has a very different culture from the UK (in fact, it is one of the most culturally similar countries to the UK).

Feel free to peruse the methodologies used in the report (of course, any study of illegal markets is harder to determine than regulated ones, but there are established means of providing the best-possible estimates). www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395925001276

There has been an increase in use of other drugs over the last few years, but those trends pre-dated legalization of cannabis and so there's no obvious link. So far, no study has shown a correlation between legalization of cannabis and increased use of illegal drugs, though some have shown increased tobacco usage (but, on the positive side, reduced alcohol usage).

And FWIW, I've lived in two of the most deprived areas in the UK (never in a HA complex but next door to a large one) and have lived a low-income apartment complex in Canada (post-legalization), so you're wrong to assume my only experience is in "naice", middle-class areas.

More crime committed by drinkers than heroin users? More punch ups maybe, I’ll give you that, but I’m pretty sure that your average heroin user isn’t holding down any form of employment and that their habits are funded entirely by crime (and that’s just after it’s on the streets). Did you get that assertion from reputable stats? Or are you just guessing?

Tea? Most heroin addicts drank tea before moving onto heroin. It's a gateway drug Aren’t you the lucky one to be able to take the piss?

@WilfredsPies - decriminalising doesn’t solve your neighbours. They won’t change. What changes them is likely much much stricter rules on housing. That kind enforcement which means they have to leave. This can be dealt with, but clearly no one cares about smoking.

I don’t disagree that many cannabis dealers are in practice teeny circles of people buying kilos and splitting them. Most low level dealing is done by children, which is desperate. The choice of children is deliberate because of a) the lesser penalties given to them and b) their lack of judgment. Cannabis dealing via gangs depends on this structure. It is countrywide. We need to break that up and pull what are mostly stupid young teens from something that is going to ruin their lives and others. A legal market doesn’t prevent it all, but it would shrink the benefits of gangs who would be operating in a smaller market.

I live where it's been legalised, and overall I think the effect has been more negative than I had anticipated.

There has certainly been an uptick in use, impaired diving which now surpassed impaired driving with alcohol, hospitalisation due to over-use, and cases of poisonings of children and dogs.

I think what surprised me more is the extent to which many people seem to think that because it has been legalised now it must mean that it's quite safe, without serious side effects or risks. I guess in a way it makes sense though, the government are always trying to discourage people from smoking tobacco, telling about the terrible effects and showing awful pictures of what happens to your body. Not to mention all the other unhealthy things they campaign against. So people, logically enough, conclude that if they are actively promoting cannabis it must be just fine. There has also been a huge jump in dodgy woo health stuff around it, so that probably contributes as well.

Beyond that, as more research is being done, more risks keep turning up, so that's concerning as well, plus the risks for young people and psychosis and schizophrenia. And vaping appears to be as bad as smoking in it's own way.