With the legalization of recreational cannabis markets in Uruguay, Canada, and several U.S. states, a breakthrough in conventional cannabis policy is emerging.
But legalization is not a binary choice between prohibition and some regulated commercial model (like alcohol). A commercial market is just one of many ways to implement legalizationand moving directly from prohibition to commercial legalization leaps from one extreme to the other.
Tom Decorte, a criminologist and anthropologist at Ghent University (Belgium), who has published numerous articles on substance use, cannabis markets, and local drug monitoring systems, argues that most of us are bypassing other, safer forms of legalization, including the nonprofit model. He explores topics such as:
Why we need to consider regulation of cannabis markets.
How local authorities and grassroots movements are advocating change.
How to best design and implement approaches to legalization.
Join the author as he examines international regulatory controls over cannabis possession, use, and cultivationas well as a framework for regulating the cannabis market via a nonprofit corporate model that promotes public health and safety over profits

Tom Decorte is professor of Criminology at Ghent University (Belgium) where he is the director of the Institute for Social Drug research (ISD). He has co-founded the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium (GCCRC) and is currently trustee of the Board of the European Society for Social Drug research (ESSD) and of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP). Tom Decorte has published widely on patterns of substance use, on the supply side of cannabis markets, and on the development and implementation of local monitoring systems of drug policies.