A new review has found that the decriminalisation of cannabis does not appear to drive up the drug's usage. However, when the drug is sold commercially this will lead to increased usage, and can have detrimental effects on the mental health of users.
As per The Guardian, an international team has been researching the shift in policies on cannabis between 2000 and 2025. They've looked at the amount of users, the drug's potency, and rates of psychoses. In the US, Canada, and other places where cannabis has been commercialised as well as legalised, the potency of the drug increased, leading to more people visiting hospital with psychosis and other mental health issues enabled by the drug's use.
In other territories, where the drug was just decriminalised, there hasn't been much evidence in the change of usage or psychiatric health declining. The same is true in Uruguay, where the drug is decriminalised by heavily regulated by the government.
Tom Freeman, first author on the review and professor of psychology at the University of Bath, said the results were encouraging to countries considering decriminalisation. However, he also said that the way commercialisation is unfolding is similar to the tobacco and alcohol industries. "When there's a for-profit industry, particularly for an addictive product, there's an incentive to sell cheaper products, and high-potency products, because they know that the more they sell, the more money they'll make, and that can increase use," he said.