Rejected petition Legalise Cannabis for recreational use. This would be a huge tax benefit for the country.

There is no worse kept secret that Wales & The United Kingdom as a whole is broke and in a financial deficit.

If it was legalised for recreational use then we would generate more jobs for the various parts of the supply pipeline which will have huge tax benefits for the nation.

Other major nations such as Canada, The Netherlands and now Germany have legalized it for recreational use and it has been an effective earner for tax for their governments.

More details

The revenue generated could be upwards of £500M to £3.5B, that is alot of money to leave off the table due to archaic laws.

This would generate thousands of jobs and would increase the general productivity of the nation.

There is a large sum of people who regularly use recreational drugs and this will help us remove money from the black markets and back into the Treasury to fund critical services.

Drug use in the UK:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/drugmisuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023#:~:text=1.-,Main%20points,(around%201.1%20million%20people).

The States revenue on Cannabis legalisation:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/110916/economic-benefits-legalizing-weed.asp

The Netherlands revenue on Cannabis:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1307527/projected-recreational-cannabis-sales-netherlands/#:~:text=Including%20both%20legal%20and%20black,reach%20nearly%20500%20million%20euros.

Why was this petition rejected?

It’s about something that the Senedd or Welsh Government is not responsible for.

Not the Senedd/Government’s responsibility

Matters relating to the criminal justice system are not devolved to Wales.

Petitions must concern an issue on which the Senedd or the Welsh Government can take direct action and, therefore, we are not able to accept this petition.

Further information about the powers and responsibilities of the Senedd can be found here: https://senedd.wales/how-we-work/our-role/powers/

You may wish to consider petitioning the UK Parliament about this issue instead: https://petition.parliament.uk/ (Their system will be up and running in the next few weeks.)

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards

Rejected petitions are published in the language in which they were submitted