Manx assisted suicide Bill architect turns attention to legalising cannabis

The architect of the Isle of Man’s assisted suicide Bill is now campaigning to decriminalise cannabis.

MHK Alex Allinson said that having achieved his ambition to allow terminally ill residents on the island to receive help to kill themselves, he now wants to liberalise its legislation on drugs.

In 2019, the Tynwald backed Allinson’s Private Member’s Bill that made abortion legal on the Isle of Man.

Personal ambition

Allinson explained to The Times newspaper that after stepping back from working as a full-time GP, he had set himself “some goals for what I wanted to do, to achieve”.

He continued: “I set out to do abortion first and then I made it quite clear in my manifesto in 2016 I wanted to look at assisted dying. And then drug reform. That’s the third one, but that’s taking a little bit longer.”

Admitting that the island had problems with drug smuggling and organised crime, he claimed that “the war on drugs has yet to be shown to be effective”.

Decriminalising cannabis, he suggested, would free up drug and police services “to deal with other issues”.

Liberalisation failure

Last month, the Westminster Government rebuffed the latest attempt to legalise cannabis in the UK.

Responding to a request by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy to look at the impact of “cannabis legalisation” on reducing crime and police expenditure connected to the dangerous Class B drug, the Home Office said it had no plans to do so.

According to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), almost ten per cent of adults aged 16-59 in England and Wales reported taking illegal drugs in the past year, although it noted that this is likely to underestimate the scale of the problem.

Sophia Worringer, the CSJ’s Deputy Policy Director, said: “Pretending liberalisation is the answer is plainly wrong. Everywhere you look, it has not stamped out the illegal drug market or acted as a silver bullet to reduce drug deaths or drug use.”

Enforcement works

A multi-agency initiative to tackle organised crime in North Wales is helping people to get off drugs.

North Wales Police reports that targeting drug gangs in a deprived area of Rhyl has hit supply. Addicts are now struggling to get hold of drugs and are asking for help to kick the habit.

Since April 2024, police have conducted at least 35 raids, made 180 arrests and seen crime fall by 14 per cent in Rhyl West.

Commenting on the initiative’s success, Chief Superintendent Owain Llewellyn observed: “I’m under no illusions – we need to continue that pressure, and we need to continue to target those who cause real harm to the community.”