The Treasury study, seen by The Independent, was commissioned by the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg ahead of the general election to help formulate Liberal Democrat drugs policy if the party remained in office.
Following David Cameron’s general election victory, the Government has set its face against reform of Britain’s 40-year-old drugs laws and rebuffed calls for a new approach to cannabis use.
But his officials’ research underlined the appeal to the Treasury and the courts and prisons system of following the lead of several countries and US states and legalising and regulating the drug.
