THE CASE FOR SMALL HOME GROWERS

The new policy of issuing on-the-spot warnings for possession of cannabis,
which follows today's downgrading of the drug, should be extended to
small-scale home growing, a leading criminologist says.

Mike Hough of the Institute for Criminal Policy Research said that as much
as half the cannabis consumed in England and Wales was grown in the UK.

Relaxing the penalties for small-scale home growing would mean that fewer
people would buy the drug from criminal dealers. The low cost of home-grown
might destabilise the criminalised cannabis market and eventually collapse it.

Professor Hough told the Guardian that the changes in penalties coming into
force today would create a new anomaly whereby it would now be more serious
in the eyes of the law to possess a growing cannabis plant than to have the
same plant after it had been harvested.

He said if you had a growing plant the presumption was that you would be
arrested and could face prison, while possessing a harvested plant would
probably carry only a warning or, at most, a non-custodial sentence.

"Simply to achieve coherence and consistency in the law there are
persuasive grounds for treating cultivation for personal use on a par with
possession.

"Home cultivation would also insulate users from criminal suppliers, a
further reason for treating cultivation for personal use as a form of
possession," said Prof Hough of King's College, London.

He said it would be necessary to define, either by weight or the number of
plants, what constituted cultivation for personal use, rather than leaving
it to the discretion of the police.

If on-the-spot warnings for small-scale home growing of cannabis became the
norm, he said it would make sense to treat anyone who allowed their
premises to be used for the offence to be punished in the same way.