They, in turn, are purchasing from large-time dealers who are part of mainstream crime. Decriminalising cannabis would not remove their hold on the drugs market. Secondly, as with ordinary smoking, there is no way of preventing the drug falling into the hands of young children. If cannabis was legal or semi-legal, it would find itself into the hands of younger and younger children. We have a youth drug culture well in excess of continental Europe.
Cannabis is but one strand of it.
The truth is we have already lost the drugs battle. For many young people, leading dead end lives without jobs, dealing in drugs is regarded by them as the only feasible way of earning cash. That is tragic. Lord McCluskey is right when he says there has to be new thinking on drugs. But the solutions lie beyond the drugs themselves.