Is Weed Legal in London? What the Law Says

No. Weed is not legal in London. Cannabis is a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which applies in Hackney exactly as it does in Hull, so possession carries up to five years in prison and supply up to fourteen.

That is the law on weed in London, and there is no city exception to it. What London does have is its own police force, a Mayor who oversees that force, and a commission that in 2025 told the government the law on cannabis possession should change. None of those has changed the law itself. They do explain why the capital argues about cannabis more loudly than anywhere else in the country.

Is weed legal in London or anywhere in the UK?

Nowhere in the UK, London included. Drug law is made in Westminster and applies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Mayor, the London Assembly and the 32 borough councils have no power to legalise, license or tolerate cannabis, and none of them claims to.

Penalties are national too. The gov.uk penalties table lists the Class B maximums: up to five years, an unlimited fine or both for possession; up to fourteen years, an unlimited fine or both for supply and production. Supply includes sharing. Growing a single plant is production. We go through each offence in is weed legal in the UK, and none of it reads differently inside the M25.

One London-shaped myth deserves its own line. There is no amount, no borough and no time of night at which possession becomes lawful in the capital. The smell on a summer evening in London Fields is evidence of how the law is enforced. It is not evidence of what the law says.

Who actually enforces cannabis law in London?

Mostly the Metropolitan Police, which covers the 32 boroughs. The Square Mile has its own force, the City of London Police, and British Transport Police covers the Tube and the rail network. All three enforce the same Act.

The difference in London is political oversight. Elsewhere in England an elected police and crime commissioner holds the local force to account. In London that role sits with the Mayor, through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which sets the police and crime plan for the Met. So the Mayor can push priorities, fund schemes and commission reviews. What the Mayor cannot do is tell officers to ignore an offence, or rewrite the Act.

On the street, a first offence for a small amount often ends short of court. Gov.uk says police can give a warning or an on-the-spot fine to someone caught with cannabis. That is discretion, not a right, and it narrows quickly: repeat offences, larger amounts, or anything that looks like dealing move towards arrest and charge. A caution or conviction can then follow you onto a DBS check and into a visa application.

Why does cannabis drive so much stop and search in London?

Because the law gives officers a specific power to search for it. Section 23 of the Act lets a constable stop and search a person they have reasonable grounds to suspect is carrying a controlled drug. That power, more than anything in the penalties table, is how most Londoners actually meet cannabis law.

Smell is the long-running argument. In April 2022 the police conduct watchdog, the IOPC, published national stop and search recommendations that asked the Home Office to review whether the smell of cannabis alone should count as reasonable grounds, and noted that relying on a single factor like that is not good practice. The government did not accept the recommendation, so smell alone has never been ruled out in law. Whether it justifies a search remains a judgement made by the officer on the pavement.

This is where London's debate is sharpest. The capital's own commission on drug policy found that cannabis policing continues to focus on particular ethnic communities, with lasting consequences for the people searched and for trust in the police. That finding is the reason the cannabis question in London is so often a policing question first.

What did the London Drugs Commission recommend?

It recommended decriminalising possession of small amounts of natural cannabis. It did not recommend legalisation.

The London Drugs Commission was set up by Sadiq Khan and chaired by Lord Falconer, and it reported in May 2025. Its central finding was that keeping cannabis in Class B is disproportionate to the harms it can pose compared with other drugs in the Act. Its fix was a move, not a free-for-all: take natural cannabis out of the Misuse of Drugs Act and place it under the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, so that possessing a small amount for personal use would stop being a criminal offence while growing and supplying it stayed illegal. Falconer was blunt about the limit: "Legalisation is not the answer."

Khan backed the report and asked the government to consider it. The response was cool. The Home Office said it had no intention of reclassifying cannabis from Class B, and the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said a change in the law was not something the force was calling for.

London has been here before. In 2001 police in Lambeth ran a pilot in which officers warned people found with small amounts of cannabis rather than arresting them, and the argument it started fed into cannabis being moved down to Class C nationally in 2004. It went back to Class B in 2009. A London experiment can shift a national debate. It has never yet shifted the law for London alone.

So what would actually make weed legal in London?

An Act of Parliament, passed for the whole country. London cannot opt in early, the way some US cities moved ahead of their states, because UK drug law gives cities nothing to opt into. The same is true of clubs, which is why no cannabis club is legal in London however it badges itself. Psilocybin follows the same logic one class higher, which we covered in are magic mushrooms legal in London.

Even the commission's version would stop short of what most people picture when they search for weed in London. Decriminalising possession removes the criminal record for carrying a small amount. It leaves every shop, every delivery and every grow exactly as illegal as today. A legal market needs a licensing law written for the purpose, and none is before Parliament. As for when one might be, nobody honest can give you a date.

Until then the answer for London is the national answer, with more argument attached: Class B, enforced by the Met with a fair amount of discretion, and debated in City Hall by people who cannot change it.

High in Hackney is a waitlist for the day UK law changes for adults, for cannabis and for psilocybin. Nothing is sold here and nothing can be until Parliament acts, but the people on the list hear first when it does. Join the waitlist