Routledge Legalizing Cannabis: Experiences, Lessons and Scenarios (Routledge Studies in Crime and Society)

Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in the world. Over the past couple of decades, several Western jurisdictions have seen reforms in, or changes to, the way cannabis use is being controlled, departing from traditional approaches of criminal prohibition that have dominated cannabis use control regimes for most of the twentieth century. While reform is stalled at the international level, the last decade has seen an acceleration of legislative and regulatory reforms at the local and national levels, with countries no longer willing to bear the human and financial costs of prohibitive policies. Furthermore, legalization models have been implemented in US states, Canada and Uruguay, and are being debated in a number of other countries. These models are providing the world with unique pilot programs from which to study and learn. This book assembles an international who’s who of cannabis scholars who bring together the best available evidence and expertise to address questions such as: How should we evaluate the models of cannabis legalization as they have been implemented in several jurisdictions in the past few years? Which scenarios for future cannabis legalization have been developed elsewhere, and how similar/different are they from the models already implemented? What lessons from the successes and failures experienced with the regulation of other psychoactive substances (such as alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and “legal highs”) can be translated to the effective regulation of cannabis markets? This book may appeal to anyone interested in public health policies and drug policy reform and offers relevant insights for stakeholders in any other country where academic, societal or political evaluations of current cannabis policies (and even broader: current drug policies) are a subject of debate. Review "As more countries look to follow evidence-based policies on drug law reform, this book is a welcome addition to the literature on this subject. The "war on drugs" has been a failure. Policy-makers need to know what the alternatives to futile attempts to prohibit drugs are. This book draws on the work of international experts to explore such options." -Rt Hon Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. "This is a comprehensive account of the diverse forms that cannabis legalization has taken in recent years, with a separate chapter telling the story and considering the lessons for each case, ranging from Uruguay to Spain to Canada, with US states, Jamaica, the Netherlands and other places in between. Other chapters consider lessons for cannabis control from regulation of alcohol and of tobacco, and from New Zealand’s attempts to regulate "legal highs". It’s a "must read" for anyone interested in drug policy: its histories are memorable, its interpretations thought-provoking. It’s worthwhile reading too for anyone interested in market regulation, in public health policy, or in law reform." -Prof. Robin Room, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University. "Professors Decorte, Lenton, and Wilkins have assembled a global all-star team of drug policy researchers for this excellent book. It’s a must read for those seeking new insights about the past, present, and future of cannabis legalization." -Dr. Beau Kilmer, coauthor of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know and director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center About the Author Tom Decorte is Professor of Criminology and Director of the Institute for Social Drug Research (ISD) at Ghent University (Belgium). He is co-founder of the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium (GCCRC). His research interests include patterns of substance use, on the supply side of cannabis markets, and on the implementation of local drug monitoring systems. He has been advisor to a range of organizations on policies to improve public health relating to the use of d