Unlike the UK, the US experienced heavy tension in restricting cannabis with the likes of movies ‘Reefer Madness,’ that used propaganda to attach negative stigma and connotations of mental illness to those who consume. ‘Evil marijuana dealers lurked in public schools, waiting to entice their children into a life of crime and degeneracy.’ (The Conversation, 2018) This narrative set the tone for the failing war on drugs, a global campaign led by the US federal government to discourage production, distribution and consumption of the plant. Prior to prohibition, the drug was recognised for it’s medicinal properties and ability to alleviate various forms of pain, ‘German researchers found that marijuana-based remedies increased the number of people who reported a 50% or more reduction in pain relief.’ (WebMD, 2018)

As mentioned earlier, cannabis can be used as an alternative treatment to other forms of medication and has even proved to work more efficiently in some cases. Loosened medical legislation has allowed for the scientific research that discovered ‘CBD being an effective treatment for people diagnosed with long COVID.’ (Drug Science, 2021). Such breakthroughs are only possible as experts are permitted to perform trials for analysis purposes. ‘Similarly, recreational activity participation was associated with better self-rated health and quality of life.’ (Peterson, 2021) As a result, full legalisation could provide a new form of nourishment for individuals as they can experience the effects of happiness and relaxation the plant has to offer which can be useful, especially in dealing with mental health .

However if cannabis was introduced into society recreationally, people will need to learn their threshold and individuals may not have access to drug education or be capable of self educating. Therefore, we may see irregularity in behaviour across the population, ‘in 2016, in Great Britain 9.6% of adults (around 4.9 million people in the population) drank alcohol on 5 or more days.’ (ONS, 2016). This implies that a percentage of the population may also exhibit addictive personalities in cannabis consumption which could in turn affect the potential productivity of individuals within the UK. Therefore, this reiterates the importance of drug education in society so people become more aware of their limitations.

There is a prevalent lack of commercial support across marketing in the cannabis industry from seed to sale because of the regulatory restrictions surrounding the plant. This minimal coverage limits the potential scale of businesses as they are unable to reach a wider audience and spread the full extent of their messages to consumers. As a result, companies can provide more value for their consumers by providing education as a means to indirectly sell data or products, partner with influencers as they aren’t subject to the same restrictions, or host in-person events to gain direct access to consumer. Although this approach doesn’t guarantee access to a mass audience, it can be essential for building a community based brand that impacts social change. The aforementioned markets interlink and also have a common ground, being the deficiency in communication within the cannabis industry.

The two-step flow of communication is typically used in mass media to model the diffusion of the innovation process. In the first stage, mass media influence opinion leaders- opinion leaders are individuals who commonly have a high influence on the behaviour of the rest in his or her network. In context, these are inquiring individuals or organisations interested in cannabis news and research. ‘In the second stage, opinion leaders influence potential adopters, which are people who were exposed to the messages from mass media but did not believe them automatically’- this is usually through other means such as social media or word of mouth.

This models social contagion which suggests that people become more conscious to a ‘story’ over time. There are various adoption rates for the diffusion of information: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. The behaviour pattern of an individual influences how they react to information hence the different rates of adoption- innovators are typically the minority as they are the first to adopt behaviours or technology, and the highest number of individuals lie between the early majority and late majority which each account for 34% of the population according to the Diffusion of Innovation Model. The adoption rate is determined by the individuals agreement with the relevance, content, benefit, immediacy, and source of the innovation. Overtime, senders are able to transmit information to the majority because the message is conveyed in a relatively relatable way but time is of the essence in shifting legislation, because the period of adoption must be consistent with the current technology.

Currently the UK is in the early adoption phase, with trials such as Project Twenty21 encouraging new innovation for access to medicinal cannabis within focus groups, before it is safe for mass implementation. This initiative is effective because the public wants to influence political activity and not necessarily public needs, so this will be an opportunity to provide useful data to inform policy change.

In an interview I conducted with Hanway Associates (the leading European cannabis consultancy), I enquired how close they think we are to seeing a ‘Recreational Europe.’ Their response was, ’Europe was about where the US was in 2012 where you saw these few small movements in states, we saw Colorado and Washington legalise which slowly built up a huge movement across the US and we started to get the feeling that small reforms we were seeing in places like Luxembourg and Malta were the signs of those happening in Europe and the fact that we have now seen Germany and the Dutch commercial cultivation experiment going on we are seeing real signs of progress here’ (Rounders, 2022). This reinforces that recreational cannabis in the UK is extremely likely but requires a unified network to gather and act on data that will implement change.

Report written by: Akeem Babalola

Photography by: Ceylon Giles