What Next For The UK's Cannabis Laws? – John Binns For Open Access Government

BCL partner John Binns writes for Open Access Government on the future developments UK legal cannabis industry, including legal, cultural and political challenges.

Here's an extract from the article:

"The first set of challenges brought by UK law to the cannabis debate are technical in nature, arising simply from the way our laws are written. One key topical example is the fact that, contrary to much public reporting on the subject, our Misuse of Drugs Act contains no exemption for products that contain THC below a certain minimum threshold (whether 0.2% or otherwise), causing a problem for many CBD products that contain such trace amounts. Another is that our Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) prohibits virtually any dealing with the proceeds of 'criminal conduct', defined to include conduct that is lawful overseas but that would be unlawful if it happened here

On the face of it, these issues would be relatively easy to resolve, by amending the legislation to bring it in line with what most people would reasonably assume is the law - although any technical solution would itself bring technical questions. Would it, for instance, be for the producer or the retailer of the CBD product to prove that its THC content is below the relevant threshold? And...