- Target:
- UK
- Region:
- GLOBAL
The British govt needs to ask itself 1 question, "Why does the Netherlands have lower drug use compared to its neighbours, while it has free sales of cannabis?". This question blows away the govt's argument that decriminalisation would lead to a huge increase in the numbers of drug users due to the said drugs being widely available.
In a 2004 report, A Comparison Of The Cost-Effectiveness Of The Prohibition And Regulation Of Drugs, TRANSFORM, concluded that "regulating the drugs market is a dramatically more cost-effective policy than prohibition and that moving from prohibition to regulated drugs markets in England and Wales would provide a net saving to taxpayers, victims of crime, communities, the criminal justice system and drug users of somewhere within the range of £4.6bn-£13.9bn."
Taxing drugs would also provide big revenue gains, says the survey. An Independent Drug Monitoring Unit estimate, quoted in the report, suggests up to £1.3bn could be generated by a £1 per gram tax on cannabis resin and £2 per gram on skunk which would surely be a big help to reducing the deficit faced by the government these days.
We, the undersigned, call on the British Government to decriminalise cannabis in the same way as has been successful in the Netherlands because the "dangers" of this so called drug are minimal to the large majority of adults who choose to use it, especially when you compare the ills that are regularly caused by the two, far more dangerous drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
Approx. 114,000 people die every year from smoking related illness in the UK and approx. 20,000 from alcohol related illness. However, there are no recorded deaths from the direct use of cannabis in history and we feel that this is an unacceptable situation that must not be allowed to continue any longer.
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The Decriminalise Cannabis Now! petition to UK was written by Rob Iveson and is in the category Politics at GoPetition.