GRAHAM GRANT: The pungent stench of cannabis and cities in decline as prosecutors, police and politicians turn a blind eye

There was a chilling despatch in yesterday’s Mail from Dr Max Pemberton about the ‘hellscape’ of Los Angeles.

He described a place where people with severe mental health problems were left to suffer in the streets without help.

And he linked these dystopian scenes with cannabis - which has been legal for recreational use in California since late 2016.

How many readers saw the striking parallels between Dr Pemberton’s disturbing experience and the reality of everyday life in parts of Scotland?

While it’s true that cannabis remains an illegal drug, it has been effectively decriminalised through the back door by the SNP.

The net result is that its acrid reek is virtually ever-present in swathes of the country – and it’s getting worse.

In the summer months, it will become more prevalent as the weather improves and smokers openly light up in parks or walking in the street.

It’s hardly surprising that such flagrant abuse of the law is so widespread, thanks to the soft-touch approach of police and the wider justice system.

Cannabis has been effectively decriminalised by the back door by the SNP

Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) – a meaningless slap on the wrist – can be dished out for people caught in possession of cannabis.

Now they can also be issued to users of heroin and cocaine - even though they are fuelling Scotland’s spiralling drug deaths crisis.

Remarkably (and shamefully), police chiefs say it would be too costly to figure out how many RPWs are handed out to users of hard drugs.

We do know that 6,610 RPWs were given out for possession of all drugs (31 per cent of the total) in 2022/23, up from 5,558 the previous year - an increase of about 19 per cent.

The SNP government backs the use of RPWs, which are issued on the spot by officers, based on their discretion, and mean the recipient avoids prosecution or even a court appearance, and is spared the inconvenience of a full criminal record.

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in Glasgow city centre will know there are similarities with Dr Pemberton’s experiences in downtown L.A.

Drug-dealing - and consumption – together with anti-social behaviour, violence and public urination are commonplace on weekdays, in broad daylight, while cannabis fumes are thick in the air.

It’s not the ideal backdrop for the Commonwealth Games, which will be hosted by Glasgow next year.

Cannabis fumes are often thick in the air in Scotlands cities

The harrowing description of people in L.A. in the grip of psychosis – something which Dr Pemberton connects with cannabis use – will also resonate with many Scots.

There is a tangible sense of decline in Glasgow and other cities, and towns, which was accelerated by the lockdown years - and recovery has been either slow or non-existent.

Police officers on foot patrol are a relatively rare sight and even if they were around, how likely is it that they would intervene to stop someone smoking cannabis?

There’s no doubt that badly depleted manpower and budget cuts mean police now struggle to muster beat officers.

More than 12,000 supposedly minor crimes have been ‘written off’ by cash-strapped Police Scotland under a new ‘proportionate response’ scheme.

So you can guess the response if you were to call in to report the stink of cannabis outside your open window, or in the local park – or playground.

People are breaking the law by smoking cannabis in the street because they know that in all probability, there will be no legal consequences.

If the worst that’s likely to happen when you’re found with heroin for ‘personal use’ is an RPW, then most users of cannabis will reckon that being found with the drug, or caught smoking it in public, is a low-risk crime.

There aren’t any cops around most of the time anyway, and even if they did see you, they’d only issue a warning – or ignore it entirely.

You can now be fined for driving your old diesel banger in Low Emission Zones in cities across Scotland – but get off scot-free if you’re found with heroin.

And an officer knows or suspects that if he or she did report someone for smoking cannabis, the fiscal would bin it.

It’s not hard to see why its use is out of control – and all the signs are that top brass and SNP ministers clearly don’t care.

A member of the Scottish Police Authority, the civilian oversight body for the single force, raised the issue of cannabis fumes in 2022.

He was told by now-retired Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Graham that the evidence was ‘anecdotal’ but that he’d look into it.

One of Mr Graham’s last significant acts in the job was to announce that police would stop fully investigating lower-level crimes in cases where there were no credible lines of inquiry (the proportionate response strategy).

He never did get round to telling us whether his cannabis inquiries, assuming they took place, had borne fruit.

Whatever action was taken to tackle the issue hasn’t worked – cannabis users can look forward to a summer of smoking it with impunity.

Defenders of cannabis argue that it’s harmless, particularly if consumption is moderate, but that’s not a view universally held among the experts.

Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at King’s College London, has warned there is ‘quite a lot of evidence that starting to use cannabis in one’s adolescence increases the risk of psychosis’, and it has been linked to several notorious murders.

Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens has painstakingly catalogued any number of atrocities carried out by people, often young men, who had been using cannabis - but the connection, if there is one, is rarely examined by the indifferent authorities.

Meanwhile, some studies strongly suggest cannabis is a ‘gateway’ drug for Class A substances.

None of this has made any difference to politicians and police chiefs who argue that drug use is largely a public health matter.

It’s a way of ignoring the problem but the net result is that it’s getting worse - and law-abiding Scots are having to contend with the fallout from their refusal to acknowledge its scale.

John Swinney and his fellow ministers should get out of their limos now and again - the pungent aroma of cannabis would be unmissable.

As for heroin, Glasgow is now home to a trail-blazing ‘shooting gallery’ for addicts - though there are also plans for a special crack cocaine inhalation room (and for ‘free’ crack pipes).

This is held up by its backers as an innovative game-changer which will help addicts and rid the streets of discarded syringes - even as drugs paraphernalia piles up in open-air drug dens in the surrounding area.

So you can take cannabis to your heart’s content, indoors or outside, and if you then fall into the clutches of heroin addiction the state will encourage you to shoot up in the comfort of a £2.3million ‘safer consumption room’.

For now, the fug of cannabis smoke lingers in our high streets - and all the signs are the stench will only intensify as police, prosecutors and their political masters continue to turn a blind eye.