Sir Mark Rowley (photo: Surrey County Council News_CC BY 2.0) and London Mayor Sadiq Khan

THE Met’s new police commissioner has said it is a “no-brainer” to try new diversion strategies for those found with cannabis rather than criminalising people, leading to calls for London mayor Sadiq Khan to speed up a change in approach.

Green Party assembly member Caroline Russell pressed both Sir Mark Rowley, who has replaced Dame Cressida Dick at the top of the capital’s force, and Mr Khan on the issue in different sessions at City Hall last week.

Answering her questions on Thursday, Sir Mark suggested he supported the idea that instead of charging people, they could be helped towards support services – a method which, he said, could lead to less reoffending.

“This isn’t about being sentimental or soft. This is about evidence and the evidence is that with certain types of crime, where you have the right conditions regarding the nature of the victim and the offender, that diversion creates higher victim satisfaction and lower recidivism,” he said. “If you’ve got both of those things, why wouldn’t you do it? If you’ve got both those things it seems tobe a bit of a no-brainer.”

Assembly member Caroline Russell

But on Friday, Ms Russell – who is also a councillor in Islington – was unable to get firmer support from Mr Khan during Mayor’s Queston Time. She was told she had run out of time even for a simple answer to the question as to whether he saw himself more like Joe Biden, the US president who has pardoned people prosecuted for cannabis use, or Suella Braverman, who had talked about increasing prison sentences for cannabis offences and even upgrading the drug’s classification before her departure as home secretary on Wednesday.

Despite Sir Mark’s willingness to answer the questions the day earlier, Mr Khan said: “To give Sir Mark some credit and some breathing space – he’s only begun three weeks ago – he’ll be preoccupied with other issues and you’ll appreciate that drugs diversion is not at the forefront of his mind; nor indeed mine.”

Ms Russell said: “I’m really glad that the new commissioner agreed with me about the benefits of deprioritising arresting and criminalising people for possession.”

She told the mayor: “You’ve got a new commissioner who has an appetite for adopting this in this city, so Londoners can benefit from a more ‘harm reduction’ approach to the policing of cannabis.” She said a dispropor­tionate number of black people were being criminalised for cannabis use, and questioned when a new drugs commission would start work. “It feels stuck, like it’s not moving forward,” she said. Her party has a long-standing national policy standpoint of legalising cannabis.

The ‘bit of weed’ guilt trip poster

The policing of cannabis possession has been an ongoing debate in the city for decades due to entrenched drugs markets. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Camden Council ran an “it’s only a bit of weed” poster campaign in which recreational users were handed guilt-trip warning about how smoking the drug could be ruining lives in a way they had not appreciated.

The campaign presented “Ricky, 17” who it said “had become stuck working on a cannabis farm for local dealers with no idea of how to get out or how to get home”.