REFORM Jersey’s leader has called for the use of cannabis in Jersey to be decriminalised.
Deputy Sam Mézec said that ‘prosecuting people for smoking a few joints of cannabis to relax (just as so many of us enjoy a few alcohol drinks) is a waste of public resources’.
He said that prosecutions ruined ‘people’s future prospects for employment’ and added: ‘We should decriminalise it, at the very least.’
Decriminalisation would mean the drug would still be prohibited by law, but an individual would not be prosecuted or criminalised for carrying a certain amount.
Prosecuting people for smoking a few joints of cannabis to relax (just as so many of us enjoy a few alcohol drinks) is a waste of public resources, and has a harmful effect in ruining people’s future prospects for employment.
We should decriminalise it, at the very least. https://t.co/C1Hqf2Wd4D
— Deputy Sam Mézec (@SamMezecJsy) October 11, 2022
Deputy Mézec tweeted the comments in response to a tweet from the pressure group End Cannabis Prohibition Jersey, which said it was disappointed that substance use was ‘only a side-note’ in the recently released ministerial plans from the Home Affairs Department.
Reform Jersey listed the decriminalisation of cannabis as one of its manifesto pledges during the election in the spring.
Earlier this year, Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles said that decriminalising cannabis could be considered as part of a wider substance-abuse strategy.
Deputy Miles said she was not ‘automatically in favour’ of the decriminalisation of the drug, but that the Island needed ‘some sort of strategy’.
She added: ‘It is something we have to look at. We have to look at the cannabis issue in the entirety of substance misuse.
‘I am very open to looking at the decriminalisation of cannabis within an overall substance strategy.
‘It does seem anomalous that cannabis for recreation might be controlled in a separate way that medicinal cannabis is.’
The minister has also suggested a States debate on decriminalising cannabis in order to understand politicians’ views.
