The future of the cannabis trade: less control, less harm reduction.

There’s a mood of paranoia – or at least concern – sweeping the “Alternative Trade Association” (ATA)  of late. If you’ve never heard of the ATA, it’s an umbrella group that represents what used to be called “Head Shops”, some of these have existed quietly in backstreets of towns and cities up and down the land for decades, selling things like bongs, large rolling papers, shirts from India and Joss Sticks. In recent years though it’s become a much bigger business largely based on selling toking kits – in dry government speak “paraphernalia” – and cannabis seeds.

First a bit of a gripe. These shops, although making their money from the alternative culture  over the years, have (with a few notable exceptions) never been too involved in any law reform campaign. Although most have been happy to play lip service by giving out the various legalise cannabis campaigns leaflets, very few have come forward with any real substantive offers of help, much less taken any public stance on the issue of law reform.

Instead, they’ve been happy to keep their collective heads down and this has been a tactic that’s worked quite well until now.

Last week was the annual trade fair of the Alternative traders known as the “Hemp fest”, this year held in London’s Brick Lane. All was not well however. What’s happened was the ACMD review of cannabis – the one which advised cannabis be kept class C , which the government ignored, also made a lot of other suggestions which target the alternative trade.

Specifically the ACMD recommended that the government investigated

Whether it might be practical to bring cannabis seeds within the scope of the misuse of drugs act

and

The Home Office should assess the extent to which the trade in cannabis paraphernalia might be more effectively regulated.

In her statement to the House of Commons the Home Secretary proposed, among other things

Possible changes to legislation and power to curtail the sale and promotion of cannabis paraphernalia

and

I also want to see more action against the trade in cannabis paraphernalia and will work with ACPO  to look at how existing legislation and powers can be used by the police, local authorities and other partners to curtail the sale of these items.

Notice how the recommendation to “regulate” the sale of paraphernalia has evolved to become “curtail the sale”.

Now UKCIA would argue that the ACMD advice to “regulate” the sale of paraphernalia was essentially good advice, as long as it meant what it seemed to say – regulate, not ban, for there is much to regulate.

The recent RETHINK cannabis and mental health campaign, for example, called on health warnings to be put on Rizla papers – well known as cannabis paraphernalia. To do this, you have to be honest about what you’re selling and why you’re selling it.

This blog and the UKCIA site in general has made a lot of the fact that cannabis is usually smoked with tobacco and the very real need to encourage tokers to move away from this habit.  Fact is, to use cannabis without tobacco, you need this “paraphernalia” Smith now wants to ban and it needs to be sold in shops which can give the proper advice on how to use it.

Not all paraphernalia is safer use stuff of course, the large Rizla papers aren’t, but neither are large bongs with shot holes. Although popular with some tokers, they are just ways to deliver big hits – much like slam drinking shorts, thus hardly harm reduction. So there is much room for regulation of both the type of paraphernalia being sold, and how it’s sold, where it’s sold from and by whom.

Something  to remember though, paraphernalia is easy to make at home. A hash pipe with shot hole is easily made from an old aluminum beer can, flattened down with holes punched into it, bongs likewise. Or pipes can be made from aluminum foil, “lungs” can be made from plastic bottles and bags. A chillum – the worst possible way to smoke really – can be simply a hollowed out carrot. All of these examples of paraphernalia carry additional risks either due to the materials they’re made of in the case of aluminium or plastic or the method of smoking as with the carrot. Such home made kit is designed for one thing only – slam toking, getting as wrecked as possible, harm reduction doesn’t come into it. Banning the sale of properly made pipes is only going to increase the use of such home made paraphernalia, and/or the continued use of tobacco.

Rather late in the day the ATA has woken up to the threat to it’s members livelihood and issued advice to the effect that shops need to keep their heads even lower down in the hope it will go away. This will do no good at all.

Head shops have a very important role to play which in all honestly has never occurred to most of them before,  they are the opportunity that still exists to regulate and have some control over the cannabis culture. Only now that they feel the threat of being put out of business are they perhaps beginning to play lip service to this with the ATA advice:

Harm minimisation information and contact details for help and advice on drug problems (ie Ask Frank posters and leaflets) should be available at all times.

Quite how this is supposed to work though isn’t clear, as other ATA advice states:

It is against the law to sell anything if you know that it is to be used for an illegal purpose. You must not engage in conversations that compromise this. If a customer disuses drugs or drug taking you should immediately ask them to leave the premises.

So how can they give advice if they’re not allowed to discuss the issue? The ATA is trying to face both ways at once and it won’t work, indeed it probably won’t wash with the law either. If the “alternative trade” is to continue, it needs to face up to some duties and responsibilities, to be upfront about what it is selling and why it’s selling it and to be responsible in doing so.  In short, it needs to find a voice and demand proper law reform – not the old “free the weed” but a place in a properly regulated and controlled trade focused on proper and sensible harm reduction advice. Indeed, if it doesn’t want to do this, should it really exists anyway and wouldn’t we all be better off without it?

Much the same argument goes for seed sales. Having legal outlets for seeds allows some form of control over which strains are sold. If there is any truth about certain forms of so-called “skunk” in relation to mental illness (something not supported by recent research incidentally) then controlling which seeds are actually on sale is  the way to do it. That means a legal, regulated and controlled sale through legal, regulated outlets.  The type of seeds sold, of course, dictates the strain of plant grown. Pushing it all further underground and into the totally unregulated world of internet mail order (and seeds are an ideal product for mail order) throws any such chance to regulate out of the window. Again, this is the sort of case the ATA needs to be making and is the sort of campaign it’s shops need to be promoting rather than this half baked head under the blanket “code of conduct”.

A little while back one of the more repugnant politicians in our view Tom Brake of the Libdems – the party which claims to have a such a decent drugs policy – tried to introduce a private members bill to outlaw seeds. We mentioned this at the time (Libdem MP Tom Brake – one reason not to vote Libdem) which produced an e-mail from a reader who was told by Kate Webb, the Liberal Democrat Communications Officer that:

Tom Brake’s stance on this has been taken entirely as an individual MP and does not reflect party policy, which remains as previously stated.

So  Libdem MP’s don’t have to promote or support party policy. It’s this sort of thing that really turns people off politics and gives MP’s such a  bad reputation. Anyway Tom Brake is apparently at it again as reported in the Guardian

Mr Brake said: “There is a huge inconsistency when cannabis is illegal, but there are shops that are in the business of promoting and selling the materials that people need to consume it.

“The law is too vague; there is an argument within existing legislation that this sort of activity is illegal, but if that cannot be proved, the next step would be to draft new legislation.

So if anyone thought the Libdems were a party worth voting for, forget it, they’re just as bad as the other two.

One other bit of screw tightening this week has been the announcement that police are to do random roadside testing for drug use under the guise of road safety. Now UKCIA has no problem with enforcing sober driving and measures to detect impairment, but this might not be about doing that. Uniquely for cannabis, this is likely to be pure drug law enforcement as cannabis can be easily detected weeks after use and they would need to set some kind of “safe limit”to allow for that, which is unlikely to happen. So use cannabis at all, and you lose your driving licence. Perhaps if it happens this big brother approach will dampen people’s enthusiasm for cars and hasten the day people turn their backs on them, which would do wonders for the environment. Every cloud has a silver lining.