Introduction
Brexit, the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, has triggered widespread speculation about its implications across various sectors, including the cannabis industry.
Unless you are a farmer who has been using EU subsidies to secretly grow cannabis then the UK’s departure from Europe isn’t going to have a detrimental impact on your day to day life. However there are a few more subtle ways in which the Brexit will impact on your every day cannabis user.
Possible Coffeeshop Ban
Even access to the coffee shops and cannabis clubs in Amsterdam and Barcelona could be at risk. One Dutch political party recently, while in power, tried to ban all non-Dutch nationals from all cannabis coffee shops to discourage canna-tourism. The ban was almost enacted, but was found to breach EU equality laws as it was prejudice to other non Dutch EU nationals. It is possible if any such ban was ever enacted again it would be on non-EU nationals meaning that all UK citizens would be banned, however if the remain vote had won there would have been little chance for any Dutch political party to enact a ban on UK citizens without them first leaving the European Union.
Likewise, restricting clubs in Spain to ‘locals only’ is likely to also eventually fall foul of EU equality laws… If either restricted access to EU nationals only, and as we are no longer part of the EU, it could see us banned from some places we have grown to love over the past decades.
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has warned Britain that the EU may also impose new immigration controls on British nationals if the UK border is closed to Europeans in the event of a Brexit. Leave campaign leaders are proposing a points system for work visas by 2020 if the UK votes to leave the EU. And Rutte said in an interview with the BBC that the rest of the EU would have no choice but to impose similar rules in return. If Britain puts up its own immigration controls then the EU will likely respond with similar controls meaning any plans to go live and work in Amsterdam or Barcelona will have to be shelved for a while.
Legal Changes and Implications
When it comes to drug legislation the EU has no power to dictate member states drug policy, however they do encourage a tolerant and non-punitive approach to drug use. By leaving the EU we are totally removing a potential route to the legalization of cannabis. Now we are putting the future drug policy squarely in the hands of our elected government and seeing as though none of the major political parties have any plans to legalize cannabis it could be a long time until we see any change to the status quo.
Furthermore many of our EU based human rights gave us strong protections in regards to cannabis use, this is believed to have been partially responsible for the legal shift in how cannabis user were prosecuted over the late 80’s and 90’s.
The current maximum prison sentence for possession for any amount of cannabis, no matter how small, is still set at 5 years. I don’t fancy letting someone like Theresa May, who is set in her fucked up tory ways, ruining a whole generations prospects by imposing less lenient cannabis sentences.
However this is very unlikely as it is agreed from police force to police force that cannabis is not one of their top priorities and that the prosecution of non violent personal drug users is just a waste of police time and money especially in a time of austerity.
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