San Francisco’s shoplifting epidemic is shocking to behold. But we shouldn’t imagine that the same couldn’t happen here. In fact, we’re well on our way. According to the British Retail Consortium, theft from stores across 10 UK cities is up by 26%. More, “incidents of violence and abuse against retail employees have almost doubled on pre-pandemic levels.”

On Tuesday, Asda Chairman Stuart Rose told LBC that “theft is a big issue. It has become decriminalised. It has become minimised. It’s actually just not seen as a crime anymore.”

In the absence of an adequate response from the authorities, retailers are beginning to take defensive measures. For instance, home furnishings company Dunelm is now locking up duvets and pillow cases in cabinets; Waitrose is offering free coffees to police officers to increase their visibility; and Tesco plans to equip staff with body cameras. 

The “progressive” response to this phenomenon isn’t quite as deranged as it is in in the US. Nevertheless, British liberals have responded as expected. A piece in the Observer is typical. You’ll never guess, but apparently it’s all the Tories’ fault: “Starving your population and then ‘cracking down’ on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable.”

But as the writer ought to know, the issue here isn’t the desperate young mum hiding a few groceries in the pram. Nor is it the schoolboy pilfering the occasional bag of sweets. Rather, the real problem is blatant, organised and sometimes violent theft of higher value items. Criminals who never previously thought they could get away with it increasingly now do — thus presenting a material threat to retail as we know it. 

But instead of addressing the issue head-on, the writer blames the victim: “Once goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking.” How terribly irresponsible of them! On the other hand, perhaps the open display of goods isn’t just a convenience for customers, but instead the hallmark of a high trust society. 

In fact, modern shops are a minor miracle of civilisation: public spaces, stacked high with products from all over the world, that passing strangers may freely inspect and handle, but which aren’t looted by anyone who feels like it.

Surely, that’s something worth defending. But if you’d prefer to abandon retailers to their fate, then don’t moan when they do what it takes to survive. Some will close, of course, and others will move their operations online. Those who stay open will guard themselves and their stock behind plexiglass and electronic tags. And then there’s the hi-tech solution: the fully automated and completely cashless store, in which customers have to be authenticated to even get in. 

Remember that retail facilities like this already exist. One day, when they become the norm, we’ll remember what shops used to be like. Then, we’ll ask why no one stood up for them.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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Britain’s medicinal cannabis industry is predicted to be worth over half a billion pounds by 2029, and is expanding wherever marijuana consumption is decriminalised. That and most other drugs have been effectively decriminalised in Scotland, so it’s not surprising that a Sydney-based multinational, Breathe Life Sciences, is expanding into the country with a factory making medicinal cannabis products. It promises to employ up to 100 people in a new plant located in Melrose in the tranquil Scottish Borders.

In recent years, cannabis has been widely puffed in the media as the latest wonder drug, a salve for all ills. Many take it for chronic pain, while others use it to ease discomfort arising from conditions such as epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. Others just take it for fun.

Concrete evidence for the drug’s medical effectiveness is hard to find, but there is a considerable cultural investment in cannabis being not just safe but positively beneficial. At least that seems to be the view of the Scottish government. Cannabis remains a controlled drug in Scotland, but police rarely prosecute those in personal possession and medical cannabis has been fully legal since 2018. In 2021, the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain, announced that police should not prosecute those in possession even of Class A drugs such as heroin, turning Scotland into a hard-drug tolerance zone.

It is often difficult to determine whether medical cannabis is being consumed purely for medical reasons, or for recreational purposes, or both, since it is taken essentially for relaxation and mood enhancement. But most clinicians seem to think it is low-risk.

However, Scotland is not a country which has had a positive experience of substance decriminalisation. It notoriously has the worst drug death rate in Europe, mainly from the abuse of benzodiazepines (“street benzos”) and heroin. Three times as many Scots die of drug abuse as English people. In response to the problem, Glasgow earlier this year opened a “safe” consumption room. There are no accounts yet of substantially decreasing drug abuse, but locals have reported drug paraphernalia littered in the streets and an increase in addicts in the area.

It is not easy to isolate the effects of cannabis, because it is often taken as part of a cocktail of drugs by so-called “polydrug users”. But buried in the statistics there are signs of an increasing rate of psychotic disorders arising from cannabis use. Public Health Scotland says the rate of hospital stays from cannabinoid-related conditions has increased roughly eightfold over the past 25 years. The Scottish Mental Health Census 2024 detailed that cannabis is now the most common substance used by psychiatric inpatients who report using drugs. Figures collated from Public Health Scotland appeared to show that, in 2023, cannabis was a greater cause of psychiatric hospital admissions even than opioids.

These are generally young people buying street cannabis, of course. The owners of Breathe Life Sciences insist that its own cannabis products are rigorously tested, quality assured, “and of course fully legal”. These products can only be purchased with a prescription and do not appear in Edinburgh’s “head” shops along with the bongs and Rizla papers.

The evidence for the effectiveness of medical cannabis is mixed, to say the least, and is still based on small-scale studies and anecdotal evidence. The lack of randomised clinical trials, nearly a decade after medical cannabis was legalised in Scotland, has worried many clinicians and even advocates of legalisation.

It is reasonable to worry that the wider use of medicinal cannabis, combined with decriminalisation, is leading to a much broader acceptance of the drug generally by people who think it is entirely safe. Indeed, it is hard to avoid the reek of pot in areas such as Glasgow’s bohemian West End. The Scottish government, however, is always anxious to be at the leading edge of progressive policymaking and has been pressing Westminster to follow its lead and fully decriminalise cannabis and harder drugs. The main thrust of Scottish drug policy is to “de-stigmatise” the drug user, rather than criminalising them.

Naturally, Breathe Life Sciences has received a government grant of £350,000 and a loan of half a million for its happiness factory. Taxpayers can only hope these funds are well spent, and not more public money vanishing in a puff of smoke.

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Iain Macwhirter was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022, and is the author of Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum But Lost Scotland. He was Rector of the University of Edinburgh from 2009-12.

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