Cannabis is the most popular illegal drug in Britain.
I'm Professor Green,
and over the years, I've had a long relationship with weed.
Before I was a musician I sold weed,
and from 16 to 24 I smoked weed every day.
In Britain today, the cannabis industry is booming.
Edibles, hash... Yeah. ..seeds, synthetics, weed...
It's like being in Amsterdam, but online.
It's like Aladdin's cave!
Ooh!
A lot's changed since my time,
and I want to know how today's market operates.
I want to discover what weed is now, and not just
what it is as a substance, but what it is in the eyes of people.
Is it all good times, or is there another side to the drug?
I've done all of the drugs, and it was weed that brought me
to my knees.
You never really think of cannabis as being the drug
that could be that problem.
At a time when cannabis laws around the world are evolving...
TV: After midnight, recreational marijuana became legal in California.
..what's happening here in Britain?
Making something illegal, it's the dumb option,
because you're basically handing the whole industry to criminals.
As behaviour outstrips the law...
My neighbours know I grow me own,
they know I'm not a bad guy.
..should we legalise weed?
There's so much information,
it almost makes it difficult to see it for what it is.
MUSIC: Xxplosive by Dr Dre (feat. Hittman, Six-Two, Nate Dogg & Kurupt)
# All my down doggs still kick it with me
# All my down hoes still tricking with me
# All the real smokers know
# Nate ain't passing nothing but dope indeed
# Real trees. #
Listening to that proper,
I haven't heard it in AGES, I don't know why, either.
It's something I used to go back to all the time.
I mean, if you look at the album cover,
there's obviously one reference that pops up quite often,
is, you know, weed.
There's a lot of weed references in it. That's not,
that wasn't a reason for liking it.
Musically, just as a fan, Dre is one of the best producers ever.
My name being Professor Green, as you can imagine,
I know quite a lot about weed.
There was a time when I was fully immersed in it,
be it the selling of it, the buying it, the smoking it.
And I think, because of that,
and because of people's awareness of my relationship with the drug
cannabis, that they think this documentary is going to be me
going, "I'm pro-legalisation, I'm pro-weed!"
It's not going to be that at all.
I've had good and bad experiences with the drug.
Nowadays, it makes me uncomfortable, it makes me paranoid,
makes me anxious, which is not what it should do.
It's not the same any more.
I've been well removed from that world for a long time,
and a hell of a lot has changed from legalisation,
to how people consume it, to the amount of strains there are.
Everything's different. I really want to know what's going on.
When I was a dealer, most of the cannabis I sold came from abroad,
but more people have learnt to grow it themselves,
and around 80% of cannabis sold in Britain is now grown here.
I'm meeting a dealer-turned-grower who cultivates his own
supply in several spots across the Midlands.
I've not actually been inside a grow before,
so this'll be a first for me.
He's asked to be called Mr X, and understandably, he's a bit shy.
Come on through. So, this is the operation, yeah?
The grow which Mr X has agreed to show me is in his spare bedroom.
Yeah? Yeah. How long have you been growing for?
Yeah. And what kind of clientele?
What would you be looking at if you got caught with this?
And what's the alternative if you weren't doing this?
But in the eyes of the law what you're doing is illegal,
and you're making quite a bit more than the average wage.
How do you feel about, if it ends up being legalised?
Even though I never grew weed,
there are similarities between the grower and I.
You know, my options weren't great,
but one that was available to me was selling weed.
And it was, at the time, a seemingly easy way to make a good
bit of extra money.
I'm not surprised that he's not a fan of the idea of legalisation,
because he's probably not a person that stands to benefit,
and, you know, if he isn't, then it would remove him of his livelihood.
Despite it being a Class B illegal drug,
we consume around 270 tonnes of cannabis a year in Britain.
Like Mr X's customers, the consumers are a diverse crowd.
I'm meeting a couple of girls who smoke cannabis every day.
Hi. Hi! How you doing? I'm Stephen. Amy. How are you? Nice to meet you.
Lovely to meet you. Good, thanks. Come on in, come on in.
This is my friend Cat, this is Stephen.
How you doing? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet ya. Take a seat, take a seat.
You've got a rose in the bong. I know!
Well, actually, someone bought me
this bong the other day, which I think is so beautiful.
I was just eyeing it up in the shop, going,
"Oh, my God, have you ever seen a more beautiful bong?"
I thought, actually, it was a nice vase for the house. Yeah.
So is this the first spliff of the day? Um, for me, it is.
I normally, would have maybe had a spliff by now.
So when do you consume?
Are you all day, or evenings only?
Me? No, I like to smoke in the day, cos I make jewellery,
I'm quite creative for my job.
Mmm-hmm. So for me, it kind of gets me into a really nice headspace.
Do you worry, at all,
about what people outside of this room might think?
So, people that you may work with, people that may employ you?
I think it's more of a big deal than people actually feel about it.
I've never come across anybody that's super offended by it.
My boss knows about it, like, my friends know, and my dad knows...
It's not, you know, I'm quite open with where I'll smoke.
I'll walk down, you know, Oxford Street at 6pm on a Friday night, and I'll be smoking a joint...
On Oxford Street? Yeah! Yeah!
Cos I used to work in Soho, and...
You're mad! I really don't think twice about it, but I think that's because I don't
look like your average stoner, they're not going to think it's
me, that blonde girl, walking down...
Yeah. ..the street. No offence to that poor rude boy walking next to me...
Yeah. They'll probably, not that I'm... But they, unfortunately, I've never had...
So you're to blame for the reason people get stop and searched?! Yeah.
Maybe, but like... "Someone's smoking weed, probably him." Yeah!
How do you feel about that aspect of it?
Like, how would you feel if you got arrested for smoking weed?
I'd be so insulted.
I mean, I don't even like calling it a drug, to be honest.
I don't say I do drugs, I say I smoke a plant, like...
what other drug makes you want to have a laugh with your friend,
and playing the guitar, or like...
doing a painting? Yeah.
I'm kind of like, "I love weed, and I just want to buy it from my mate who sells it."
A lot of people associate, like, drug dealing with criminals
and they don't trust those people.
Personally, I love the guys that deal to me. I really get on with them...
You love them? ..and I always have, like...
But then, there's a different side to what they have to deal with, that you don't see.
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess none of us particularly know where our weed is coming from.
We don't know the guy who's growing it, we haven't seen his setup.
We don't know his lovely garden, if he's a, you know, just a really like keen gardener?
I don't know, obviously, where it's coming from, but...
I almost feel like I, I enjoy the thought of that?
Yeah. Happy days.
Happier?
ALL LAUGH
Amy and Cat, um...
They're really, like, I guess they're quite naive,
in a sort of blissfully unaware way.
They live in their little kind of weed bubble.
They don't seem to be aware of any of the risks associated with it.
You know? Not with the growing, or the selling. But, um, I don't know.
Maybe attitudes on cannabis are changing.
Maybe it is becoming more, like, widely socially acceptable.
Maybe there are many more people who feel that way about smoking
weed as and when they please, even if it's on Oxford Street.
If smoking weed seems less taboo,
the British cannabis market reflects that.
It's now estimated to be worth several billion pounds -
so huge, it's now counted in the country's GDP.
There's a lot of people getting high
and even sharing it on social media.
That's the shit.
One of the fastest areas of the market is online.
Every month, Brits buy almost 2 million pounds' worth of drugs this way.
The consumer can get their hands on a massive range of cannabis
without even leaving the house.
I've got in touch with journalist and author Mike Power.
He writes about the drugs trade,
and has expert knowledge of the dark web.
On this gloriously glum day, Mike, what, what are we up to?
We're going to go and visit a contact of mine,
a guy I've done a couple of stories with in the past.
And it kind of shows the current reality of the way many people
buy cannabis in Britain.
He's going to show us how he buys cannabis on the internet
and has it delivered to his house by the Royal Mail. Right.
Is this, like, via someone, like, personal messaging,
someone he knows who sells drugs, or is it...?
No, it's something called...
Is it something else?. ..it's a dark net market.
How do you know who's trustworthy?
There's a feedback system. It's like eBay.
It's like when you buy stuff on eBay, how do you know who's...
STEPHEN LAUGHS
..trustworthy on eBay? You look at the previous record, you look at the...
So you can see how many sales someone's had? Yeah, exactly that.
Can you leave reviews? Yeah, you leave reviews.
Like, stars, you know, five-star, you say whether it was, you know, er...
good quality, whether it was, if it was a nice smoke.
It's funny though, because the, you know,
the very first thing ever bought and sold on the internet
was cannabis, and that was in 1971.
You know? The very first thing ever bought...
Not, like, the first drug ever sold, the first THING.
STEPHEN LAUGHS
There were only five computers in the world at that time,
online, and the first two of them that got together to have a chat
was to try and buy some cannabis.
So, yeah, if you look in the market here, this is an online market.
So we're on dream market at the moment. Mmm-hmm.
This is on a Tor browser.. Right. ..which...
VOICEOVER: Buying cannabis on the dark web means a huge
choice as well as quality and convenience.
Mike's contact, who wants to protect his identity,
is an family man who buys for personal use.
..all over again. Right.
So, we go onto the cannabis section, I mean, there's 41,000 drug
dealers available on this site, and 11,000 of them are for cannabis.
So there's all of the different ones.
And there's all, and it breaks it down as well, doesn't it? Breaks it down.
So there's 11,309 dealers of cannabis, edibles, hash...
Yeah. ..seeds, synthetics, weed. And that's quite different, isn't it?
Instead of like going to like a normal kind of weed dealer,
you just get, you get what you're given. Yeah.
Whereas here, the choice is with you, yeah? Yeah. That's good.
I mean, which, for most weed dealers, is they get what they can get.
Yeah.
No-one's got this much of, like,
no one person has got this much of a selection.
It's like being in Amsterdam, but online. Yeah.
You get exactly what you want. Mmm. How are the reviews of that?
What have the other customers said that have bought this? So...
"Five stars, spot on weight, was a great smoke."
"Highly recommended, back for some more."
"Hash is beautiful, really fucks you up, this one."
STEPHEN LAUGHS
"Got a sample..."
Everyone's five stars, five stars, five stars.
How worried are you that, instead of this turning up,
it might be a copper at the door?
Um, not really,
because it's, the likelihood of getting caught is pretty slim,
with the amount of Amazon packages and other such stuff coming
through the post every day, the likelihood is very little.
It seems like every part of the cannabis market is thriving.
With so much choice and availability,
I want to get a sense of who's running some of the criminal
distribution and find out how it works.
We're going to go and meet, I suppose,
the area managers of a network of marijuana growers and dealers,
so they're a little bit higher up the chain than the people we've
encountered so far.
OFF-SCREEN: Do you feel at all apprehensive,
going into the situations we're going into?
Um...
I like to think that the people that I'm working with have
done their job properly!
HE LAUGHS
And made sure that they're not walking me into anything too dodgy.
Hello, mate, you all right? It's Stephen.
What do you want me to do?
Yeah, cool, no drama. All right.
All right, mate. See you in a minute. Bye.
So how big is the operation?
How many steps between you lot
and it getting handed down to someone on the road?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, for the most part, what do people want at the moment?
What's the lay of the land?
Do people want mellow...?
Do they? Yeah? Yeah.
But don't you think that brings a negative aspect to the plant,
if it's for escapism rather than enhancement?
It's a big part of it, though. It is...
Bloody hell.
What's the biggest risk for you lot, though? Robbers or police?
Fuckin' hell.
That's a lady in her fifties?
So, there is...
Well, that's the part of the plant that's not that peaceful.
Do you know what I mean?
It's the business behind it, innit?
I've encountered violence in my time selling drugs.
There's nothing nice about having people stick guns in your face
and being robbed, believe me,
but nothing, nothing as severe as having acid chucked in my face.
I think what will probably shock a lot of people was how blase
they were about it.
You know, there's this idea about weed being this plant of peace,
but it's money-motivated, and, for money,
people will go to great lengths to make or take it.
And that's the sad, horrible truth about that other side of weed.
I want to know what lengths people are prepared to go to to get
a slice of the pie,
so I've negotiated a meeting with one of the most feared players.
Right now, we're off to meet someone who...
..is a robber.
He is a jacker.
It's not something I agree with,
but it's as much a part of drug dealing as selling drugs is.
What can you do?
You work outside of the law, there are...there are no laws.
It's a dirty part of the business.
The robber has only agreed to meet me
if he's covered up from head to toe.
What's happening?
Cool. Mmm. So, do you rob grows, do you rob people?
All right, so what's your moral code, if any, then?
Yeah.
I meant conscience-wise, though,
cos you're the worst thing that
could happen to a lot of people!
And then someone comes along and takes it!
What sort of situations have you ran into if it, or has it gone wrong?
What's the biggest crop you've found?
800 grand?! Yep.
And what are you...? How far are you willing to go?
What are you willing to do?
But, if it's... Would you be prepared to kill a man?
HE INHALES
What you have there is exactly what an illegal market creates,
and I don't need to tell ya, people that I've spoken to have told us
that they're more worried about HIM than they are about the Old Bill.
If it was legalised, would that...
..you know, would that remove that situation from ever occurring?
I can't answer that question. I don't know, but...
all of the money that is made illegally by weed could go to
better use if it was sold legally, taxed properly,
and put back into the communities that need it the most.
I do think there are some valid reasons to legalise cannabis,
but one of the biggest arguments against is the drug's harmful effects.
I was surprised to learn more than one in ten regular users become
dependent on cannabis.
I've been invited to a meeting of Marijuana Anonymous
to hear from some of those people.
Er, hi, everyone, so, er, my name is Claire. I'm Mike.
My name's Robert, um, and I'm a marijuana addict.
Do you think, beginning to use marijuana,
do you think it started out innocently? Yeah.
It was great, you know?
Go over to the park on a Friday afternoon, you know,
smoke a few joints with my pals.
I'll never forget the first spliff that I had.
I shared it with my sister.
It was kind of like that relief of
when you've been hearing an alarm going off in the background for
like hours and hours, and the moment it stops,
it's like, "Shh!"
It's the first time in my life I just felt like amazing, like
everything was just...
Any issue I'd ever had was completely gone.
And from that moment, I think...
I smoked every day for 24 years.
How did you find your way here?
Um, I'd started to, you know, smoke weed a lot more in the daytimes
and then started to smoke it in the morning,
so I'd be getting up, waking and baking.
What I started to do was only smoke alone.
My world became really small.
And then I started to do really weird stuff,
and I'd start to encourage an argument with my other half
so I could leave the house and go and get high.
Two years into our relationship, my girlfriend got pregnant.
She's like, "Right, you need to stop smoking now."
And I'm like, "Yeah, I will when the baby comes." You know?
And I genuinely meant it, as well.
I'm in the hospital, I've had a baby, she had a Caesarean,
I fucking want to just get out of there and have a spliff.
I would go to great lengths to score.
I would mix with people that I felt dangerous and uncomfortable with.
And the baby came home, and, like, "Yeah, I know we've got a baby,
"but why can't I just smoke weed?"
And I kicked, I kicked her out.
I've thrown my missus out the house with the little one
because I can't smoke weed.
I, I started feeling, like, suicidal, you know,
over weed, of all things!
Now, I've done all of the drugs,
and it was weed that brought me to my knees, weed that really got me to
a point where I started to think,
"Fuck it, shall I just do myself in?"
I feel quite drained, to be honest with you.
And that was a bit of a wake-up call for me.
Um...
You never think of,
and that's probably the most dangerous
thing about it, is you never really think of
cannabis as being the drug that could be that problem,
because it is more, it...it is more socially accepted.
Before the session, I didn't think I'd relate to any of their stories,
but I did.
It's made me think more about my past relationship with cannabis...
Hi there, Mandy's ready for you now. Thank you.
..and I've arranged to talk to addiction expert and therapist Mandy Saligari.
Hi! Hello. How you doing? Mandy. Stephen, nice to meet you.
Hello, come on in. Cheers.
Does cannabis addiction exist?
Yes. OK. Cannabis addiction exists
in that, if I use cannabis on a regular basis
to fend off the negative emotion,
I will create a dependence, and that dependence then starts to
turn into, if you like, an emotional, psychological addiction.
So we have two addictions - we have a physical addiction at a
cellular level, which is the easiest one to treat, and then you
have the psychological addiction which is about, "Who am I?"
"How do I feel about myself and how do I fit?"
And when you have a drug medicating that part of somebody...
Yeah.
..then you're really in trouble.
But what I'd like to determine, then, was
when I smoked weed how I did, was it an addiction?
I ask you because I smoked my first spliff at 11.
At 13, I started to smoke regularly.
By 16, I think it was 16, I was selling it, so it was always
around me, and it was pretty much a morning to night thing.
Yes, having that makes you high risk.
When people graduate from smoking weed into dealing, I think
there's a real identity thing there.
It's about control...
I felt like I grew a pair of bollocks. Yeah.
Capisce? Not to be blunt, I did.
It's that kind of, it's... Yeah, it's an identity.
Cos I was... Obviously, not growing up with a dad... Yeah. ..at home, there was a lot of insecurity.
Where was your mum? Um, there, but not.
She was the first person to leave the household.
My great-grandmother often took the care of me while my nan was at
work, and she passed away when I was 13, which was also when I...
Yeah. ..pretty much stopped going to school.
And started really smoking weed.
Oh, shit. Yeah.
I mean, I...
HE LAUGHS
..I hear vacancy. I hear rejected by mum.
The addict profile is one where, um,
they are self reliant, yet insecure, because, originally,
"I was let down, so, fundamentally, the only person I can rely on is me."
So you form a relationship with something that becomes your prop.
Yes, we're talking addiction,
because there is an original wounding that isn't attended to.
Going into that, I didn't really know what to expect, you know,
I don't, to my knowledge, have an addictive bone in my body,
but maybe that was part of me, me smoking weed, maybe it was me
nullifying everything, you know, quietening all those worries, and
anxieties, and resentments in my head. Um...
I didn't really think about that until, until sitting in there.
So what happens if it is legalised?
It just becomes another one of those things that's normalised.
Would you just see more and more
people using it to plaster over their problems?
There's a hell of a lot to take in,
and I'm finding it pretty hard to see a clear line through it all.
The reason that I find this part tough is
because there is conflict, genuinely, because
there are positives and there are negatives to both sides.
So, with legalisation comes some positives.
In some people's eyes those positives are,
"It would take cannabis out of the hands of criminals,"
and, "It would lower the violence, or stop the violence that occurs
"because of cannabis-related violent crimes."
But that's not to say that there's not negatives to making
something legal, cos we've met people who, you know, have,
have suffered very, very, very negative effects of smoking weed.
For some people, weed has been incredibly detrimental
to their lives.
And, with legalisation, I imagine it will push a lot of people who
are on the street selling weed into selling harder drugs.
So, would it not be irresponsible to make something that can cause
that much harm even more accessible?
It's a tough one.
One place in the world that has already made some big
decisions about legalisation is America.
RADIO: In 25 states, medical marijuana is legal.
Pot shops have opened up along this stretch of Denver.
People call this The Green Mile.
We're a legitimate industry. We've
been written into the constitution of Colorado.
More and more US states are legalising cannabis,
and a huge amount of money is going back into the public purse.
We raise more money than alcohol taxes do,
and we don't cause NEARLY the problem.
Is this is going to be a multimillion dollar business?
Multibillion dollar business.
If cannabis was legalised in Britain it would
raise an extra billion pounds a year in taxes, according to a recent study.
But while it remains illegal,
some Brits are already making money out of it.
Gavin Sathier-Nathan, a former Tesco and Facebook exec, is helping
wealthy clients invest their money in the booming American market.
He's also opened a cannabis dispensary in Las Vegas.
Gavin? Good morning. How you doing?
You all right? Good thanks. Yeah. Good to meet you.
Tell me, how did you come to...
Cos this is all new to me, the potential legalisation,
people wanting to invest in it.
How did you get involved in the idea of
setting up a legal marijuana business in the UK?
I read some research about what was happening in the cannabis industry in the US.
We know that there is about 50 billion dollars' worth
of demand for cannabis in the US...
Wow. ..and that's primarily through illegal channels, right now.
And so moving that into these legal channels means it's a huge
economic opportunity for businesses.
How long's the dispensary in America been open?
So, the dispensary's been open for a couple of weeks.
And it's a completely different experience to the one that we
have here in the UK, where...
Yeah. ..you know, you have to go and find a guy on a street.
There's some photos of our dispensary. Got a spaceman in there.
As you do. Yeah.
When they come in, it feels like they're being taken to another
planet. So that's the inside of the dispensary. Yeah.
And you can see the... The products. Yeah. They're the products, they're the menus. Mm-hmm.
How big can this be? This could be huge. This could be huge.
So, you know, some people liken it to the end of prohibition of
alcohol in the '30s in the US, and we look at it now and we think,
"Who's going to be the Johnnie Walker of this space,
"or the Guinness of this space, or the Smirnoff of this space?"
So, yeah, an absolutely enormous business opportunity here.
That was what I wanted to ask you,
because who do you see this shift in legalisation benefitting?
In all likelihood, it's just going to be people with investment behind
them and, you know, corporate companies... Yeah.
..that make the money out of it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah, it, you know, the stakes are getting higher and higher,
you know, and I know that a lot of the guys who are home growers
find it difficult to reconcile the fact that cannabis is
a naturally occurring plant with the fact that big
businesses are going to be wanting to make a profit from it. Yeah.
But really, if we want to realise the potential of cannabis, we need
big companies with deep pockets.
When do you think this is likely to come to a head?
When do you think there's going to be a genuine discussion... Yeah.
..as to how, if we proceed, we do proceed with it?
If you were to ask me to hang my hat on a number, I'd say, "Look,
"you know, within three to five years, could
"I imagine regulated models for dispensing cannabis in the UK?"
I think that would be reasonable, yeah.
Cool, thank you. Yeah. No worries. Thank you very much. Yeah.
Cheers, Gavin. Nice to meet you, Steve.
Gavin was all right, weren't he? He seems like a good bloke.
A good bloke who stand to make a good lot of money
if there is a change in legislation.
But, you know, if it does become big business... If you look at alcohol
and tobacco, and corporations don't really tend to
take into account too much the harm that they do people,
because it becomes money driven.
It becomes about profit.
So is this going to help harm reduction,
or is it going to make...is it going to make things worse?
The more I wrestle with it, the more I come back to weed's harmful
side and the question of risk.
It's not just addiction.
One of the most talked about issues is what's been called
cannabis-induced psychosis.
Smoking the most potent forms of cannabis has been linked to
almost a quarter of new cases of psychosis.
I didn't like going out anywhere. I was scared of going out.
I'd get anxiety.
Some varieties being cultivated contain more of the compound
which is linked to psychosis.
You can't always believe what you see on the TV.
I want to know how likely a cannabis smoker is to experience
conditions like psychosis, and what part the drug has to play.
Celia Morgan, a psychopharmacologist who's researched links
between cannabis and mental health has agreed to talk me through it.
What is the percentage of people that are
more likely to develop psychosis?
So, smoking cannabis contributes to psychosis and people suggest
that it might bring the onset on, it might bring it on a bit earlier.
Amongst heavy smokers, it roughly doubles your risk of developing it. Yeah.
But, actually, so many other factors
are really important in developing it.
One of the most important we know is stress... Yeah.
and things like social deprivation... Right.
which are much more key to whether you develop it or not.
Cor, stress and social deprivation go... Go hand in hand, yeah.
But environment and smoking weed definitely are two contributors, and
it's not just a case of weed being the sole cause of the psychosis?
No. In fact, the plant is a very complicated thing that has
all of these different chemicals in it, and the tinkering that
we've been doing with weed is making it a more dangerous substance.
So, we need to do a lot more work, I think, to understand exactly
how vulnerability interacts with your environment and smoking weed...
Yeah. ..to develop psychosis.
Although most cannabis users won't suffer negative effects,
for some, heavy and prolonged use can be the tipping point.
So what's in the drug that can be harmful?
The cannabis plant contains around 100 chemicals that are unique to it,
and the most common one is THC, so
that's the thing the gets people stoned.
We've found that people who smoked weed that was high in THC makes
them anxious and it can produce these kind of psychotic-like effects.
CBD, or Cannabidiol,
is the second most common chemical in a cannabis plant.
It reduces anxiety and when it's given to patients with
psychosis it is actually anti-psychotic.
So it seems to be like a kind of opposite, have opposite effects to THC.
Yeah. But they both occur in a naturally growing plant.
Like, almost, so it's almost a balancing effect, in fact? Yeah.
Yeah.
Celia tests the levels of THC and CBD in street weed to work
out the potency of what's being smoked today.
So, Stephen, do you know what these different types of cannabis are?
Ha-ha. Well, that's obviously skunk.
Mmm-hmm.
It doesn't smell too, like, fruity. Mm-hmm.
Um, that looks like hash to me.
Mmm-hmm.
And that, to me, looks like pollen.
Spot on. And would you have a guess at how much THC, which one had the most THC in it?
That will definitely have the most THC in. Spot on, again!
This is why you're Professor Green!
SHE LAUGHS
Skunk is now the most widely available cannabis in the UK.
Often with higher THC and lower CBD,
it can be more dangerous to some people's mental health.
People have done some research and what they've found is that,
um, growing cannabis under intense lights -
and that how skunk's grown predominantly in this
country now - that actually reduces the level of CBD in the plant,
so it make sense that, then, skunk has actually got lower CBD,
cos the way we're growing it is actually taking it out of the plant.
How would you feel about it being legalised and regulated?
Do you think that would be a step in the right direction or the wrong one?
I think, from a scientific perspective, from all the research I've done over the years,
I think it would be an entirely positive thing,
because you'd be able to regulate
the different levels of these chemicals in cannabis and people
would know what they were getting.
It's like with alcohol, if people
were drinking tequila at the same rate they were drinking wine,
then you'd think they'd have more negative effects,
and people think the idea of that's ridiculous,
but that's the situation we sort of have with cannabis.
Meeting Celia gave me some clarity. People are smoking weed anyway.
Shouldn't the priority be to bring it above board,
in order to minimise harmful effects?
What makes this argument really difficult is that there are
people who, after smoking weed, have suffered psychotic episodes.
There's no doubt a harmful side to the drug, but Celia raises
a really, really good argument for legalisation and regulation.
They can control strain, strength, people know what they're smoking.
They can make informed decisions about what they consume and what
they put in their body, which makes consumption of cannabis safer.
Regulation only comes with legalisation,
and that decision lies with those in power,
and although almost half of Brits are in favour of legalisation,
a recent proposal to change the cannabis laws was read to
an almost empty House of Commons.
Any idea that we can protect people by keeping it illegal is fanciful.
Hear.
No-one now believes that we can actually win the war on drugs.
That proposal didn't go any further in parliament,
so I've come to see former deputy prime minster Nick Clegg,
to find out what conversations might be going on inside Number Ten.
Hello, mate. Hey! How you doing? You all right?
Very good to meet you. Good to meet you.
Good to meet ya. Thanks for coming here.
What's your stance on legalisation?
You can't ban drugs from existence, they... Mmm-hmm.
..exist, they have done for thousands of years,
they've been used for thousands of years, millennia.
They'll continue to be used. Yeah.
And they can be taken responsibly, but they can also do a lot of harm.
So, it kind of seems to me, making something illegal is - what
I believe it is, which is - the sort of soft option, well,
it's the dumb option, because you're basically handing the whole industry to criminals.
They've got no interest reducing the harm to anybody -
all they want to do is just rake in profit.
How many conversations were there between you and Cameron about this?
Well, to be honest, Cameron and I didn't have that much of a conversation
cos he just wasn't interested at all.
That just wasn't a priority for them at all, and...
You can't be the only MP with these views. No. Collectively,
strength in numbers, surely something could be done.
Yeah. There are a fair number of MPs, there are a lot of MPs,
privately, who will tell you this.
They just kind of feel, given everything else we've gotta deal
with - the NHS, immigration, Brexit - it just doesn't, it quite
understandably doesn't get onto the top of people's priorities.
With how progressive certain countries are being now...
Yeah. ..how far behind do you think we are?
We're very, very far behind, and this government's going to do
nothing. Nada. Nowt. Zip.
Nothing? Nah, nah. I mean, no.
You said that with absolute confidence, and I believe ya!
I spent five years trying to persuade these people,
not least, Theresa May... Yeah. ..to look more imaginatively at this.
It's a cultural thing as much as a legal thing.
Possibility of legalisation is clearly some way off, so whilst
the law remains unchanged, how is cannabis being police?
Up until now I've put off meeting the coppers.
I've got an uneasy relationship with them, but I've been invited to spend
the day with Durham Police, to see how they tackle the illegal trade.
We are here today to follow the Durham Police on a police raid,
which...
..if I had a choice, isn't really something I would be a part of.
Just the fact the I've been on the other side of a police raid. Twice.
I was arrested for something that I was never charged with.
But the documentary that we are filming is about weed,
and we have to show every aspect of it.
And this is something that is a part of it as much as everything else.
The police have had a tip off about a suspected cannabis grow.
We've gone to the magistrates with that information.
The magistrates have to be happy with the information that
we give to them for them to, um, give us a warrant.
Mmm-hmm. Cos if we knocked on the door and somebody had a cannabis
grow in there, the chances of them letting us in are very slim.
There's a strong smell of cannabis coming from the address.
Members of the public believe that cannabis is being grown
and that drugs are almost ready to be cropped.
Ken and John, if you guys want to go to the back, you're going
to force entry to the door.
This is quite an interesting angle.
Yeah.
If you're caught possessing cannabis,
you could face up to five years in prison.
If it's with intent to supply, 14 years.
I've no idea what we're going to find,
but I feel uneasy about being here.
Said we'd hang around. All right.
Walk around.
Once we arrive, ten coppers AND a firearms officer
make their way into the building in search of the cannabis grow.
Can't smell any weed.
What's the situation so far?
Well, the house itself is in a poor condition inside, it's obviously...
There's a few dogs in there
and it's like the dogs have taken hold of the property, really.
There is people living in there,
albeit there's not people in at the minute.
It's all right, will do, will do.
I can't work out if they've found what they're looking for,
but after a 40 minute search we return to the station,
and I get to see what they picked up.
So this is the results of your raid? That's the result of it.
There's not an awful lot in there.
People may look at it and sort of think,
"Well, it's an absolute waste of time." Mm-hmm.
But it's information that's come to us, and we've acted on it.
Well, cos if someone just smelt someone smoking a spliff, that
wouldn't be reason enough for you to obtain a warrant to raid an address, would it?
No, I mean, if, if we knew what was in there...
OK. We don't know until we go and do it.
It's obviously a lot better for us...
What I'm trying to distinguish is,
if I'm smoking a spliff in my back
garden, and someone smells it and goes to the police station,
am I then likely to be raided,
on the chance that there might be a grow in my house?
Depends what they're saying. Are they smelling it intermittently?
Mmm. Is the smell there all the time? Somebody may be under the
impression there's a lot more in there than what there actually is.
It's what's turned out on this occasion.
Until we go into an address, we don't know.
The person in question could be brought in and charged,
but in this instance, they receive a warning for possession.
Quite a lot of effort for a small amount of weed.
The police thought they were going to bust a massive grow.
I almost felt a bit sorry for them.
Though in their defence,
a real change is underway here, and the police are being
encouraged to change the way they police cannabis.
Durham's Police and Crime Commissioner has been defending the
decision that officers in the county will no longer prosecute cannabis
users who grow the drug for their own consumption.
Ron Hogg says officers will focus on tackling drugs gangs and dealers,
rather than prosecuting people who cultivate the drug on a small scale.
I've taken a short drive to meet Durham's Police
and Crime Commissioner, Ron Hogg,
the man spearheading the new strategy.
Hello! Hi there! How you doing? I'm Stephen. Good to meet you, Stephen.
Ron. Ron? Nice to meet you. Have a seat, have a seat. Cheers.
What is your stance on it?
In the police force today, we actually, er,
shape our responses on what were call threat, risk and harm.
And really, so an individual cannabis user doesn't pose a great
threat, risk, or indeed, do they do any particular harm to individuals.
So therefore, from that point of view, let's not actually go there,
and let's not tackle that.
What we want to focus on are the guys who are making the big
money out of it, you know, the suppliers, the producers
of cannabis, and these are the guys we want to take out.
I'm shocked to hear that from you.
Er, well, no, it's... I really am!
You seem like a decent bloke,
and I know you can't tar every copper with the same brush, but
honestly, you're being, you are, you're showing genuine compassion...
Mmm. ..which is not, to be honest, not what I expected.
We had to really think about it very hard and clearly, cos we know,
statistics tell you,
send someone to prison, it is going
to cost up to £50,000-£60,000 a week to look after them. Mmm-hmm.
You release them, and actually most of these individuals
will, in 12 months, 62, 63% will have reoffended.
Yeah. So it's a different approach.
Now the police have announced a more lenient approach to small
scale cannabis growers and users,
a group taking advantage of this are Teesside Cannabis Club.
They have a healthy dialogue with the police,
and they agreed to meet me - openly, and undisguised.
The club is an 83-strong collective who grow cannabis for personal use.
Trevor, Michael and Simon are three mates who grow theirs together.
What conversations have you had with Durham Police directly,
and what have they said to you you can get away with?
What they've said,
the official policy is that they will act on complaints ONLY.
Now, if you're being a sod,
and making your neighbours' lives hell with people coming
and going because you're dealing left, right and centre,
you deserve to have the coppers come through your door.
If you're somebody who's growing for medicine or just to be able
to chill out, whatever, without causing your neighbours any
hassles, then why should the police come through your door?
It's a far better way of dealing with them than putting them
through a criminalisation process.
How many of you have been criminalised?
I've been, that's one of the reasons why
I set up Teesside Cannabis Club.
I had over 36 different convictions for cannabis,
I'd been raided nine times for cannabis,
and for what I planned, for smoking it,
never for intent to supply, just because I always was smoking it.
My nickname was Ziggy Mustafa Spliff!
I always had a spliff in my mouth, know, like, that was...
It was just how I was known. Yeah.
And... Yeah, I was never like that.
It was my trademark! You know, like, for people, to know you?
It's your trademark, you always have a spliff hanging out your mouth.
It all seems quite progressive, and the club members stick
carefully to what they'd say is a small-scale operation.
For personal use only, nine plants per person.
It's like Aladdin's cave!
After you.
Ooh, it's bright in there, innit?
It is.
How many strains have you got in here at the moment?
What was the other one? I can't remember now.
You've lost me already anyway.
THEY LAUGH
I'm never going to remember all them but it sounds good.
Remember I'm working as a collective... Mmm.
..so, under, so under the collective rules
I could effectively be working with 27 plants.
Mmm.
The only secret to growing your own in Durham right now
is being a good neighbour!
So... My neighbours know I grow me own, they know I'm not a bad guy.
They have been very, very supportive of it.
I've been very surprised, actually.
They got a good deal, ain't they?
I mean, the guy's got a grow right next to his blimming bed,
in his bedroom, with God knows how many strains.
He lost me after AK-47 or whatever he had in there.
It seems progressive to me. It seems like a better way to police things,
because they're not doing any harm. If there's no victim,
there's no crime, essentially. Um, and who are they hurting? No-one.
It seems like a really sensible way to police the drug,
as opposed to arresting people for personal use.
Baby steps in the right direction?
Maybe?
Drum roll, drum roll, what's the decision?
Am I for or against?
I started this completely open-mindedly.
I've got loads of information,
I've heard so many arguments for and against, for and against, for and against, for and against.
My tiny little brain is suffering!
But I think what it has to come down to is, are people safer
if it's legalised?
Yes, because they have more information available about what
they're going to consume and therefore can make a more educated decision,
which means that people are safer,
which would lead to harm reduction.
Let's legalise weed.
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