The Green Party backs Cannabis Social Clubs and The Right To Grow Your Own
The drug policy working group for the Green Party of England and Wales has been hard at work over the past year resulting in a draft of a whole new policy. The group consists of party members and external consultation from organisations such as Release, Transform and Anyone’s Child. It is a comprehensive policy that seeks to properly legalise and regulate all substances. The policy will be put forward at the Autumn conference with the hope of being adopted as official policy. One element is the regulation of cannabis. The Greens are not alone in calling for drug policy reform. So why is the Green Party’s position any different from MPs in other parties who also support reform?
Unlike the neoliberalism of other pro-reform agents, the Green Party seeks to make the production, supply and consumption of cannabis unprofitable for the corporate sector.
How could this be achieved?
Well, essentially by developing a framework for the production, supply and consumption of cannabis from the grassroots up (excuse the pun) and putting the resources of the emerging Green Rush into the hands of the many and not the few. Three important words spring to mind - Grow. Your. Own.
The Green Party favours the social club model primarily because it aligns itself with the ethics of the party. It is community based and not for profit. These two principles are both socially and environmentally sustainable.
Social: cultivating a community approach protects young people, keeps individuals from being alienated, cuts the cost of the whole process (e.g. energy costs, costs of seeds and equipment), allows medical and recreational users the ability to choose which strains work best for them, and provides a local educational space. Not for profit means there is no-one getting super rich and cannabis remains affordable to all.
Environmental: put simply, local production for local consumption means less of a carbon footprint. Cannabis Social Clubs would also fit into a wider mixed economic framework that includes the state-run NHS (producing its own medicine and selling the excess in the global market), hemp-based worker co-ops (producing raw materials for the building, beauty, textile industry etc.), social enterprises (e.g. food based CBD business), and regulation around the individual/household (e.g. number of plants allowed).
If cannabis was regulated this way then Corporate Canna™ would find it very difficult to get a substantial foothold in the market.
