REASONS FOR EUROPE’S CHANGING APPROACH TO CANNABIS

Cannabis is a drug often mentioned as an illicit drug in the offices of drug law offenses in Europe. Being one of the most commonly used drugs among young adults (15-34). This brought about a debate to prohibit or permit the usage of cannabis not only in Europe but also across the world. The proposal to legalize the drug has raised concerns whereby there will be more usage of cannabis and more harm to the citizens because it will mostly be used for recreational purposes and not for medical purposes as intended. 

Europe’s main concern of legalizing cannabis use is for medical and scientific research and not for recreational usage as it is mostly perceived by people and other nations. Despite cannabis being an illegal drug, it was grown for different reasons which are fiber, oil, and its concern basing mostly on medicines and drugs. Cannabis products are used for medicinal and industrial purposes as well as for intoxication. For medicinal purposes, it has different purposes whereby at some point it was used to treat chronic pains. Some of its extracts were also used to make mouth wash and its flowers for vaporizing. 

In industrial use, it was used in fiber where they would extract hemp but under several agricultural policies whereby there was a procedure to determine the hemp content which varied in the maturation of the plant. These policies were to make sure the components do not exceed some points ie THC content was not to exceed 0.2%. 

The legalization of cannabis came along with the reduction of the consequences when one was found in possession of it. Is it a positive drug test or a negative drug test i.e medical or recreational? Even if it was recreational, it could not lead to court as it was earlier but maybe the police would deal with you and give you some punishment to discourage its usage. Possession of a small amount could not lead to imprisonment. They were only limited to possess small amounts because large amounts could be linked to supply which could lead to prosecution. 

They also ended up making cannabis joints where one could access it freely. These places included coffee shops, cannabis social clubs. These places were licensed to sell and allow the usage of cannabis. These cannabis social joints also tried to come up with rules to avoid charges of drug trafficking and supply i.e they could register their members which is also a way of protecting them from the law. 

To sum up we see that cannabis is now seen as a less illicit drug whereby even the consequences of possessing it are less. The European’s are also trying very hard to legalize cannabis and its usage hoping that these debates will provide an objective and reliable basis for future policy decisions concerning the planting and usage of cannabis in either way.