By Alice Mason
London is popular for being the headquarters of cannabis making it the cannabis capital of UK. Areas like Camden and Brixton are particularly not so famous for public consumption and open sale. The London population is just over 8.17 million but if you consider the entire London Urban area, the total population becomes around 11.9 million people.
If you take into account the entire metropolitan area of London and the entire commuting belt area, the total population comes around to be 15 million and that is not the stop. They seem to be increasing manifold as each year passes.
As the UK population touches at 62.64 million as per the World Bank statistics, the population of the city of London makes up the 13% of the entire population of UK. The London Urban area includes 19% and the metropolitan area makes the 24% of it. This means it’s an entire full quarter of total UK population.
Amount in Percentage of UK residents consuming cannabis
There is a huge number of differences in the amount of the consumers among the UK residents. But they vary around 6.9% and is the commonly agreed upon number. The people under this consuming bracket are 16-59 who are now consuming the popular Skunk restrain. The figure is considerably low in comparison to the 1996 peak of 9.5% even though the figure has gradually risen since 2009 and 2010 and dropped to 6.6%.
Of the UK population, 6.9% of them translate to an estimate of 4.32 million individuals and 1.04 million could be roughly estimated to live in the London Metropolitan area making it to 24%. It is very easy to assume London contains an disproportionate number of cannabis users compared to that of the whole UK due to the concentration and habitat of various other communities that have been traditionally using cannabis seeds.
Traditional use of cannabis used by London based ethnic groups.
One of the most popular known cultures is the African-Caribbeans and they use it as a cultural practice. Many other cultures inculcated the usage include the Afghan, Moroccan, Egyptian and many other African and Asian based communities. There are certain South American cultures that may incorporate a bit of culture use of cannabis to a degree but many of the same cultures use the cannabis have a major involvement in importing the Cannabis to UK.
Many of these communities are concentrated in and around London. The Afghans do practically not exist outside the capital while 70% of the afghan population are living in London. However, in the recent years they have migrated to other larger cities of UK. Out of the so many African-Caribbean living in the UK, 61% are residing in the London area as per a statistics.
Cannabis that London Consumes
An estimate by the Independent Drugs Monitoring Unit (IDMU) gives out a figure between 622 and 1407 of cannabis being consumed every year in the UK out of which 65% are supplied by domestic producers.
There is no specific data existing for cannabis users with the London area but using the conservative estimate of 1.04 million users of London, consuming cannabis at the rate in which against the whole country is consuming, the figure comes around to 149.27 and 337.68 tons that are consumed annually in the city.
The sum equates around 0.41 and 0.93 tons but then this figure can be somewhat higher when taken into account that the availability and consumption rates across different cultural backgrounds and people. So if you want to round it, the cannabis consumption comes around one ton per night.
