The war on drugs has failed. It’s the slogan chanted by many of our establishment elites.

Indeed, the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Faulkner, has issued a new report making the case for the decriminalisation of cannabis for those caught in possession of small amounts.

The hard-left Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, the man who runs a city in which crime itself has practically been decriminalised, offered his support.

The report calls for evidence-based decriminalisation, and naturally, The Guardian and Observer columnists poured in with their backing, claiming cannabis prohibition is racist and a waste of police resources.

'From the 1970s onwards, Governments have pretended to crack down on cannabis'

But now, three of Britain’s most senior police chiefs have urged officers to crack down on cannabis use, dismissing the idea that it is a lesser crime.

From the 1970s onwards, Governments have pretended to crack down on cannabis.

But in reality, the laws that state even possession should lead to time in prison were and are rarely upheld.

In the year ending March 2020, 90,000 cannabis offences were recorded, yet only around 1,000 people were in prison with cannabis as their primary offence.

Politicians, judges, journalists, and police have upheld an orthodoxy that normalises the use of cannabis.

And it is often the people who don’t have to live with the consequences of the drug who seem to think its use is perfectly acceptable.

Perhaps some of them took it at university and thought it was harmless.

But there are serious consequences to widespread, habitual cannabis use.

It has been shown repeatedly that there is a strong link between cannabis use and the development of schizophrenia, psychosis, and other psychotic disorders.

The drug has also been linked to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation..

Sadiq Khan has called for the decriminalisation of cannabis

Cannabis always comes with drug dealers. Which means gangs. Violence. Robbery. Shoplifting

It means people too scared to stand at the bus stop, too scared to go out late at night, to go to the shops, or to spend time in the park.

Cannabis is the drug that represents the social and moral decline of our age: the breakdown of trust, both in each other and in our institutions; the decay of communities and neighbourhoods.

The truth of the matter is that while some in the elite say the war on drugs has failed, as Peter Hitchens has argued, it was, in fact, the war we never fought.