Cannabis: From prohibition to regulation. "When the music changes so does the dance"

ALICE RAP (Addictions and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe - Reframing Addictions Project) is the first major Europe‐wide project studying addictions as a whole and their influence on health and wealth. The aim of this five‐year €10‐million co‐financed EU project is to stimulate and feed scientific evidence into a comprehensive public policy dialogue and debate on current and alternative approaches to addictions and to inform the development of more effective and efficient interventions.
The ALICE RAP Policy Paper series aims to provide concise evidence briefs for decision‐makers and advocates working on key addiction‐related issues. This fifth paper in the series focuses on cannabis.
An estimated 2,500 tons of cannabis are consumed every year in the EU and Norway, corresponding to a retail value of between 18 and 30 billion Euros. 23 million people (6.8 % of all 15‐ to 64‐year‐olds) have used the drug in the past year and about 12 million (3.6 % of all 15‐ to 64‐year‐olds) in the last month. The vast majority of these cannabis smokers in Europe are supplied by unregulated criminal markets; users remain unprotected from negative health and social impacts; public revenues are lost in supporting criminal justice systems and often discriminatory enforcement policies; and, potential tax revenues remain uncollected. Driven by public demands for change, multiple jurisdictions around the world are now debating, developing and, in some cases, implementing models of legal cannabis regulation.
Drawing on global and European experience in regulating tobacco and alcohol, this Policy Paper makes the case for why current prohibitionist approaches need to be changed and how legal regulatory cannabis policies can be crafted that protect public health, wealth and well‐being.
For most jurisdictions cannabis offers a blank canvas. It provides an opportunity to learn from past errors, and replace criminal markets with regulatory models that are built on principles of public health and well‐being from the outset, without a large‐scale legal commercial industry resisting reform. By removing political and institutional obstacles and freeing up resources for research and evidence‐based public health and social interventions, legal regulation can potentially create a more conducive environment for achieving improved drug policy outcomes in the longer term.