The government has legalised cannabis for medical use but strict rules still apply

Taxpayers have spent more than £2.5 billion detaining up to 8,000 people a year for cannabis offences since 2015, The Times can reveal.

Figures from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that more than one in every 100 people behind bars in Britain over the past five years was convicted of a cannabis offence — with thousands more kept in police custody. The figures include only prisoners for whom cannabis was the main offence, not where the drug was a contributing factor to another offence.

The average prison inmate costs taxpayers £37,543 a year, meaning that the government has spent more than £181 million on cannabis prisoners since 2015. The real cost to the public climbs to £2.5 billion, the Taxpayers’ Alliance says, once police,