Efforts to suppress the sale of cannabis in the USA have had little effect, it has been claimed.
An editorial published on the British Medical Journal online by Professor Robin Room, of the University of Melbourne’s School of Population Health, says that prohibition is failing in its aims and may be worsening the problem.
His report, Tools for Debate: US Federal Government Data on Cannabis Prohibition, shows while efforts to curtail the selling and use of cannabis has increased, with the US federal anti drug budget rising from about US $1.5 billion in 1981 to US$18 billion in 2002, the numbers of cannabis users have gone up.
Between 1990 and 2006, cannabis-related arrests increased from under 350,000 to more than 800,000 annually and seizures of cannabis rose from under 500,000lb to more than 2,500,000lb. Over the same period, the street price of cannabis decreased by more than half, potency increased and the proportion of young adult users rose from about 25 per cent to more than 30 per cent.
“Intensified enforcement of cannabis prohibition thus did not have the intended effects,” says Prof Room, adding that drug prohibition has contributed to increased rates of violence.
The USA’s experience with the regulation of alcohol and tobacco may offer useful lessons on how a regulated market in cannabis might best be organised.
He suggests that state control instruments, such as licensing regimes, inspectors, and sales outlets run by the government – and which are still in place for alcohol in some areas – could be extended to cover cannabis, which would “provide workable and well controlled retail outlets for cannabis, as has been proposed in Oregon”.
Countries who choose to adopt a new approach to cannabis control “could allow a regulated legal domestic market, while keeping in place international market controls as a matter of comity (whereby jurisdictions recognise and support each other’s internal laws)”.
“The evidence from Tools for Debate is not only that the prohibition system is not achieving its aims, but that more efforts in the same direction only worsen the results. The challenge for researchers and policy analysts now is to flesh out the details of effective regulatory regimes, as was done at the brink of repeal of US alcohol prohibition,” adds Prof Room.
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