Global Cannabis Commission Report – The Beckley Foundation

The Beckley Foundation Global Cannabis Commission Report

Prohibition supporters must be aware of one thing by now; if cannabis were not included in the war on drugs, it’s quite possible there would be no serious opposition to the whole approach, or at the very least the opposition would be very different. But cannabis is included and to a large extent underpins the whole approach, without cannabis the massive police and enforcement industrial complex, invasive laws, public relations advertising campaigns and much more besides would never have happened. In short, the war on drugs simply wouldn’t have become what it has today had cannabis not been included in the arbitrarily constructed list of “immoral” intoxicants, but we are where we are, so what can be done about it?

The war on cannabis was originally a racism based suppression of cannabis using cultures (Blacks and Latinos) in the USA, coupled with industrial forces seeking to destroy the hemp industry all dressed up as a social health issue which have become enthusiastically enshrined in international treaties – you can check out the whole sorry story here on UKCIA if you’re sceptical of that claim. Cannabis, it has to be remembered, was never banned because of any serious health or social problems caused by its use, most if not all of the scare stories we’ve seen relating to cannabis use since have been little more than hype. That of course doesn’t imply that cannabis is harmless come hell or high water, but it is true that most of the harms have either been greatly overstated or – worse – created by the prohibition regime in the first place.

Another examination of the evidence has come along to try to find a way out of this madness of cannabis prohibition, this time from the Beckley Foundation entitled The “Global Cannabis Commission Report”, written in 2008 is now online here. It yet again presents the case for cannabis law reform, all the usual logical arguments we’ve heard before, but what makes this report perhaps different from those which have gone before is that this one takes stock of the effort over the past 50 or so years or so and it goes on to suggest alternatives to the failed war.

The situation has however, been fundamentally transformed over the last half-century since its prohibition, due to cannabis having become firmly established as part of the youth culture, particularly in developed countries. Large illicit markets have emerged to supply the demand. The strenuous efforts to enforce prohibition through policing and quasi-military operations against illicit growing and sale have failed.

That, really, is the hard truth which must be faced eventually by governments; prohibition of cannabis has not prevented it from becoming pretty well mainstream amongst young people. When prohibition supporters argue that 4% of the population is low compared to legal drugs they quietly ignore that fact that the 4% is highly skewed towards young people – it’s not a 4% spread evenly throughout the population. If we take “young people” to mean “up to early 20’s” cannabis use is well over 50% in some communities and is pretty well the norm in most, yet the war on drugs is sold to us on the basis of “protecting young people” .

The report spends some time examining the health and social effects of cannabis use, it doesn’t come to the conclusion that cannabis is the “harmless herb”, instead it acknowledges concerns about the health risks of smoking, the mental health scare and the impact of cannabis use on young people. It also examines the claims of higher levels of THC in some strains currently on sale these days and correctly apportions blame for the to the economic environment created by prohibition.

Increases in potency have probably resulted from a combination of selective breeding of higher potency plants and a shift to indoor cultivation using the sinsemilla method. All of these trends have been encouraged by the illegal status of the product, which favours the production of more concentrated forms.

The core of the report acknowledges that we are in the situation we are in due to international conventions and seeks to map out pathways for change

In this Report, the aim has been to draw on the available evidence to offer some possible paths forward to a more realistic and effective global regime for cannabis control.

This is, ultimately, the sort of debate we should be having, indeed it’s one the LibDems acknowledged some time ago before they got into power

Seeking to initiate a European level review of the drugs problem and the range of policy responses with a view to securing renegotiation of UN Conventions on Drug Trafficking. (this is very important)

So, what do the Beckley Foundation suggest? The report looks at reforms that are possible within the existing conventi0ns, which it calls “Softening prohibition”, which we will call “bending the law” because that’s what it is.

It describes the control regimes which have departed from a standard approach of full criminal prohibition, and reviews the evidence of the impact of these alternative regimes on cannabis use and other indicators. The first problem they come across is the most obvious – the law is not enforced evenly within jurisdictions

The alternative cannabis use control regimes that have evolved in different jurisdictions in recent years are characterized by considerable heterogeneity in their key characteristics. This complexity makes their analytical examination challenging. As in any analysis of law enforcement, one critical difficulty is that there are numerous discrepancies between the ‘law on the books’ and the ‘law in action’.

Cannabis law enforcement under the current regime is patchy and very much a postcode lottery, something which shouldn’t really be news. So in trying to find ways forward it’s helpful to define the options clearly. This should be easy, but of course it’s not:

In this chapter, we follow Pacula et al. (2005) by using the term ‘depenalization’ to refer to any change of cannabis use control provisions in the letter or practice of the law that reduces the severity of the penalties – whether criminal or civil – imposed on the offender. The label of ‘depenalization’ therefore could include reforms that retain the criminal status of cannabis possession as an offense, yet remove or shorten the periods of incarceration, or reduce fine amounts, as possible sanctions. The term ‘decriminalization’, then, will be used only to refer to reforms which change the status of cannabis use from a criminal to a non-criminal (e.g. a civil) offense. Thus, reform measures of ‘decriminalization’ can be viewed as usually a sub-category of ‘depenalization’, although it can be that the civil penalties are more onerous than the criminal. Since ‘decriminalization’ in turn has often been misunderstood, the term ‘prohibition with civil penalties’ has been seen as preferable to ‘decriminalization’. The removal of all punitive sanctions from cannabis use is often described as ‘legalization’. However, alcohol Prohibition in the US never included criminalization of possession or use of alcohol, and it is not usually thought of as a “legalization” regime. Furthermore, it is likely that even if cannabis sale were legalized it would still be governed by different tools of regulatory law (e.g. public health, commercial or workplace laws).

All clear? Good. No it’s not clear is it? To be honest, what this chapter is discussing in plain English is how the law can be bent  so as to become less harsh. It’s all about finding ways around the failed policies, putting sticking plasters over gaping wounds. But of course, this is what has happened, it’s how the Dutch “coffeeshop” system works and it’s what’s lead to decriminalisation in Portugal and to an extent in Germany and The Czech Republic. The range of fudge options is examined in western countries around the world and it seems that nearly everywhere – with the exception of hard line Nordic countries, the law is bent to some extent or another, even in the USA. The real problem with this approach of reducing penalties for possession or use is supply, every small amount of cannabis the law turns a blind eye to originally came, via a dealer, from a larger amount

In cannabis control reform regimes where cannabis use is depenalized or even permitted on a de facto or de jure basis, as in the reform systems in the countries outlined above, the supply and availability of cannabis for the purpose of personal possession and use inevitably becomes a key practical matter. This is an especially challenging issue, since most standing drug control laws in these reform systems strictly prohibit and provide for heavy punishment for any cannabis supply activities (and in some instances have been strengthened further in exchange for more liberal control approaches to dealing with possession or use), and thus by default may expose most users to considerable criminal enforcement and consequences which the alternative use control measures are aiming to reduce or avoid.

The law can only be bent so far, eventually we hit the practical problem of supply. If you are to allow even small amounts of low level use, in practice you also have to accept some level of supply, it’s a rock and a hard place situation.

The report than looks at the impact of this range of law bending fudges (it doesn’t use that term incidentally) in various jurisdictions and, whilst it goes to some lengths to acknowledges the problems with data collection and interpenetration, finds little if any evidence that bending the law in these ways increases cannabis use.

Impacts On Prevalence Of Use
There does not appear to have been any large increases in cannabis use in countries that have maintained the de jure illegality of cannabis but implemented reforms which, either at a national or subnational level, have reduced the penalties to civil or administrative sanctions.

and

Regarding impacts of reforms on prevalence of cannabis use, it is also apparent from a number of the studies that, at least as long as the illegality of cannabis is maintained, the laws and sanctions which apply seem to have, at most, a relatively modest impact on rates of cannabis use.

A finding supported by several other studies.

So having looked at the options for bending the law to reduce the problems caused by cannabis prohibition, what about the real options, for cannabis control regimes under a new international regime? Firstly, the changes needed in the treaties are examined along with the option of totally trashing the treaties. The report concludes sadly

None of these three methods of removing cannabis from the 1961 Convention seems likely to succeed in the foreseeable future, although it would be a interesting first step to try to delete cannabis from Schedule IV of the Convention. Accordingly, they will not be further considered here.

Which is probably realistic, so what about withdrawing from the conventions? Of course the UK could do go its own way:

Denunciation and reaccession with a reservation is thus a viable path for a state which wished to remove cannabis from its adherence to the 1961 Convention, though it would certainly draw adverse comment. However, under present circumstances there might well be objection by one-third or more of the parties. In general in international law, objections to a reservation simply mean that there is no international agreement between the reserving state and the objecting state for the matters covered by the reservation, unless the objecting state is “specifically denying
the reserving party’s status as a party”. This would presumably pose no problem for a state reserving cannabis out of its obligations under the treaty.

If only a politician would have the guts to do such a thing! It’s the “nuclear option” and no-one really knows what would happen if a state tried to do this. Perhaps equally daring would be to use

“Error” and “fundamental change in circumstances” as grounds for withdrawing from a treaty or suspending its operation.

And the reason for this is really simple

In 1961 [when the Single convention was agreed], cannabis use was largely confined to some enclaves of entrenched traditional use in particular societies, and otherwise to small and marginalized fractions of the population. Almost a half-century later, the situation is quite transformed: in dozens of societies, cannabis use is widespread in youth populations, and is widely regarded as a normalized part of growing up

The world has, indeed, changed. Various other options are presented, but one in particular may now actually happen. In November California votes on “Proposition 19” to legalise cannabis. If this happens

A method of nullifying an obligation in international law guaranteed to raise considerable controversy would be for a state simply to pass legislation conflicting with the 1961 and 1988 Conventions: for instance, to set up a domestic control regime which legalizes production and sale of cannabis for non-medical use.

There can be little doubt that if the US decides to change its law international conventions can go hang – so the events in California come November could have far reaching implications. However, as of now the situation is summed up

With any of the paths forward outlined above, the basic drawback is that there will be vociferous opposition from a number of quarters – from the INCB, from the United States, and from a number of other countries. The opposition will becouched in terms of the old idealized rhetoric about the need for solidarity among humankind to defeat a common scourge. In practical terms, no country up till now has been willing to weather this storm and actually to denounce any of the conventions.

So given this impasse, what can be done?

The health harms from cannabis are clearly sufficient to justify substantial regulation on its marketing and availability. And it is important that the risks of health harms from cannabis use are communicated to users. On the other hand, public policy should take into account the relative risks in comparison to other common behaviours that carry some risk. In this comparative context the risks are on the low side.

But in all honesty nothing much beyond the bending of rules can be hoped for without significant change at the international level, although this probably has to come about through change at the national or even local level, almost a catch22 situation. The report concludes with

Fifty years after the adoption of an unequivocal international prohibition on cannabis in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, we face a very different world. The set of international rules and norms which were adopted then have not proven effective in the modern world and they have adverse consequences for those who get caught up in their provisions. Effectively the conventions restrict the ability of signatory countries to adopt cannabis policies and laws which are driven by evidence. Further, in doing so they also restrict the accumulation of evidence to inform the development of new systems of control which may be more appropriate to the modern world. There is a clear need for change, and yet the international drug control system seems increasingly paralyzed and immobile. There is no question that moving forward will be difficult. But it is not impossible. In this report, our aim has been to draw on the available evidence to offer some possible paths forward.

Maybe. With luck California will vote yes to prop 19, it needs something to make the feathers fly.