They believe the island’s current cannabis regime also unnecessarily damages users’ prospects later in life and prevents the States properly regulating the drug and earning money from its sale.
The requete, led by Home Affairs president Marc Leadbeater, was lodged with the States Greffier on Friday and is expected to be debated by the States in March.
‘The prohibition-based approach to cannabis carries direct and indirect costs for the criminal justice system, including policing, prosecution, court time, custodial and community sentences, and associated rehabilitation and probation services,’ said the deputies in their requete.
‘While cannabis-related offences do not generally account for the most serious harms within Guernsey’s criminal justice landscape, they nevertheless require ongoing enforcement activity, including investigation, arrest, charging decisions and case preparation. These activities consume finite police and court resources that must be balanced against other priorities, including serious violence, sexual crimes, organised crime, safeguarding, domestic abuse and higher-risk drug-related harm.
‘In addition, individuals convicted of cannabis-related offences may enter the criminal justice system in ways that carry longer-term social and economic consequences, including impacts on employment, housing and rehabilitation outcomes.
‘These downstream effects can place further demands on public services beyond policing alone.’
Medicinal cannabis has been available on prescription locally since 2020. The deputies behind the requete claimed that since then a two-tier system had evolved in which cannabis users can fall on different sides of the legal boundary despite having similar patterns of use.
More than 1,000 prescriptions are being issued every month, some of which are known to be diverted into the hands of recreational users.
Health & Social Care president Deputy George Oswald, who is not one of the signatories of the requete, said recently that misuse of cannabis had become one of the biggest problems facing the island’s medical services and led to an explosion of challenges across health services.
He told the Guernsey Press Politics Podcast that he hoped to hold talks with Home Affairs in the near future.
The deputies behind the requete have proposed setting up a working group which would include one member from each of five committees, including HSC and Home Affairs.
The working group would be required to report to the States by the end of 2027 – a year later than the signatories of the requete initially hoped – recommending a model and timetable for a regulated cannabis regime. Only at that point would the States decide whether or not to legalise the drug.
‘The States are not being asked to endorse cannabis legalisation.
‘They are being asked to endorse informed decision-making,’ said the signatories of the requete.
The signatories alongside Deputy Leadbeater are Deputies Tina Bury, Andy Cameron, Aidan Matthews, Charles Parkinson and Gavin St Pier and Alderney Representative Alex Snowdon.
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