A CANNABIS campaign group has said it is disappointed at what it sees as a lack of attention given to substance use in the Home Affairs Minister’s plans.

End Cannabis Prohibition Jersey co-ordinator Simon Harrison said a new substance-use strategy was crucial to helping move towards the decriminalisation of cannabis.

Ministers recently published their priorities for the next three years. Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles said she wanted to refresh ‘our community safety and substance use approach’ by ‘working closely with our partners on responding to and preventing issues which cause concern in our community by focusing on early intervention and prevention, considering substance use, and other harms such as gambling’.

Mr Harrison said: ‘Substance use only seems to be a side note in the plan, rather than a headline topic. It is disappointing that it does not seem to be a priority. We have not had a substance-use strategy for three years and so we don’t know where we sit with a lot of topics.’

He added: ‘The minister has previously mentioned that decriminalising cannabis could be considered as part of a wider substance-abuse strategy and so this strategy is critical to move towards decriminalisation.’

Mr Harrison recently said it was ‘unfair that people were being prosecuted and left with a criminal record for possessing cannabis which tarnishes their future, when we have a growing medicinal cannabis industry and many countries are now moving to decriminalise or legalise it’.

Currently, if you are caught with less than 15g of cannabis or cannabis resin, it is dealt with at a parish hall inquiry by way of a written caution for a first offence and a second offence, if more than a year has passed since the first. Subsequent offences and offences over 15g result in a court appearance.

An amendment in the proposed Crime (Prejudice and Public Disorder) Law would allow a £200 fine for repeat possession of class B and C drugs, which a Centenier could levy at a parish hall inquiry, according to Mr Harrison, who labelled it a ‘simple form of decriminalisation’.

The group and Reform Jersey leader Deputy Sam Mézec have called for cannabis to be decriminalised.

Deputy Mézec said: ‘It is blindingly obvious that it [decriminalisation] is inevitable.’