Interesting article although like many things in Vice (which for all its “edginess” is funded by Murdoch and Walt Disney (!)) the headline is misleading and the article itself though marginally better written is a bit superficial.
I am not sure if the reporter is British or from Canada or USA or some other English speaking nation (perhaps the English language Vice is edited outside UK) as their reporting of UK law enforcement seems to lack detail and important “local knowledge”
On a wider scale, cannabis is no more or less “legal” in the UK than it is in NL, DK, PT, DE, CH or other countries which have various levels of tolerance and decriminalisation. Or for that matter anywhere else in the World.
In all these countries there are also regional variations as to the exact level of tolerance; or other factors such as low population densities and or relatively well educated middle class drug using populations that make social experiments a lot easier.
One important (and quite recent) factor which is overlooked in the report is that policing targets anywhere in England are an extent set locally with an opportunity for input from civillian residents in each region via the local Police Commissioner; as well as non binding suggestions from central authorities like wherever Sara Thornton works now. She did to be fair continue with a tolerance experiment in TVP area; although it was already in place before she arrived and metpol were also doing the same.
That means how users and dealers conduct themselves is important. If folk don’t obviously act like wannabe gangsters/hard nuts (and sadly there are some pot dealers who behave like this) and don’t cause other problems with their usage or growing techniques they are likely to go unnoticed. Even NL and DK are having problems in some areas due to gangster types infiltrating the cannabis dealing scenes and actual violent incidents (for example residents of Christiana in Denmark recently locked off some cannabis dealing areas after two coppers and a civillian were shot at by an migrant dealer).
