Cannabis Investment
Reasons for legalising cannabis – Liz Truss’ hazy stance
Reasons for legalising cannabis may be obvious to many, but we want to discover what the new UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has to say on the matter.
Are we about to see huge reform on recreational cannabis, or is it the usual status quo for the Tory party?
The Conservative PM – once a Liberal Democrat in her student days – has a chequered past of flip-flopping politically, changing her stance on Brexit in recent years, but in Oxford University also stating that cannabis should be legal in a published newsletter.
However, when she took the top job on 6th September, the country of Bermuda’s bid to pass legislation on cannabis reform was promptly halted by the Foreign Office – the department Ms. Truss had just been the head of.
Two All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) have taken it upon themselves to spearhead work to liberalise UK cannabis laws further.
The Medical Cannabis under Prerscription APPG and the APPG for CBD Products have unveiled a ‘Cannabis Plan’ that propose to change medical cannabis cultivation, prescribing, hemp licensing and cannabis financing.
Reasons for legalising cannabis: Jobs and taxes
Nicholas Morland, CEO of Tenacious Labs, is co-chair to the CBD APPG’s adivsory board, who said:
“What we are finding is that as long as we are reasonable and we divide it (our proposals) into sensible blocks every single MP we speak to says ‘Yes, you have my support. Just tell me when you have something to support’.
“Our aims now are to find ministers in the newly-formed cabinet who want to be the lead and to give instructions to their individual departments to determine who should be working on what.
“The proposals we have put forward could create 500,000 new jobs and deliver billions of pounds in tax revenues – and we have not found anyone who says no to these proposals.
“We’re trying not to make a big splash…but who would say I don’t want the jobs, I do not want the tax revenues?.”
The APPG will be focusing its efforts on the Home Office and agriculture and business departments of the state.
Mr Morland commented: “We are now at the stage where it’s about the process and the execution. We have spoken to the people in these departments – other than the Ministers who have just been appointed – and our proposals need to be added to the list of things that they are doing.
“We want to make sure we are not just on the ten things they say they are doing, but we are also on the five they are currently working on.”
He added: “Fundamentally we’re against prohibition which puts money into bad people’s hands. As cannabis becomes more socially acceptable it needs to be managed in the same way we manage alcohol.”
“No one wants more epileptic children; no one wants criminalisation for people buying (CBD) hand cream.”
The appointment of Mr Rees-Mogg is apparently welcomed by CTA Co-Executive Director Marika Graham-Woods, who says “It’s a good thing – he has no issues with the APPG cannabis plan we announced in July. And why would he? it will create lots of jobs, support the new economy and fuel the development of the green economy.
“The new PM has been previously briefed on the cannabis plan and we feel like the doors of Westminster are opening up to cannabis.”
The Cannabis Industry Council (CIC) was quick off the mark, having already written to Liz Truss about opportunities available now that Britain has left the European Union.
CEO Mike Morgan-Giles said that Brexit has given the UK a chance to implement its own regulations on hemp and CBD.
“Another area of importance is helping to enable patients to have improved access to medicinal cannabis”, he stated.
There does appear to be, on the whole, some cross-party consensus growing when discussing the reasons for legalising cannabis in the UK.
Reasons for legalising cannabis: Medical efficacy
Jeff Smith, a Labour MP for Manchester, received plenty of support for a bill that was intended to further access to medical cannabis on the NHS, but ultimately did not make it past the lobbying stages.
It aimed to simply build on legislation already in place since 2018 that permitted medical cannabis to be prescribed in the UK after epilepsy sufferer Billy Caldwell’s case received national coverage.
This same legislation has, so far, only resulted in three children receiving the life-changing drug to treat some rare forms of epilepsy.
A growing swathe of private clinics have popped up in the interim to fill the void and prescribe expensive prescriptions to thousands of patients who are desperately seeking unlicensed help.
Recent opinion polls have damned the Westminster stance on cannabis, showing that compared to those who oppose the legalisation of cannabis, there are almost twice as many who support it.
For this fundamental shift in policy to happen, more MPs and Peers need to feature talking points around regulation in their manifestos.
An emphasis on health and economy in Germany’s parliamentary reform led to them unveiling a fully-regulated adult-use market, to be introduced in two years.
Top-down cannabis reform under a conservative government has always seemed like a pipe dream, but the economically-liberal new PM is keen on exploring areas of growth for the UK.
