Contrary to popular belief, drug policy does not have to choose one extreme or the other – illegal or legal. There are so many options and potential models for changing drug policy, which in many instances could work wonders in the UK. They work elsewhere – why not here?

Beau Kilmer from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center believes that the key could lie in doing things incrementally, illustrated in the graphic below:

The problem right now is that the way the UK government is operating, it is failing in its primary directive – that being to look after the best interests of the public. Not only this, but by ignoring public opinion you take a decided step away from democracy. Criminalisation of weed encourages organised crime, fuels the black market, makes it easy to fall into debt and hard times in general, takes up valuable police time and basically does nothing for anyone but the country’s criminal contingency.

Which means that whichever way the government decides to go from here, things can at least only get better…we hope…maybe.