Campaigners call for digital cannabis market for the UK

The UK should have a legal, digital-only cannabis market, according to a new report.

The regulated market would limit access to anyone younger than 21, with checks similar to buying alcohol online.

The report, from pro-drug legalisation think tank Volte Face, argues that a controlled market would offer safer products and offer the ability for revenues to be taxed - potentially raising around £800m for the exchequer.

"We believe that Britain's multibillion-pound cannabis market should be developed and operated exclusively online by a private sector that is stringently controlled and regulated by democratically elected governments," the report, called The Green Screen, argues.

But anti-drugs campaigners have called the suggestion an "opportunity for national disaster" and "absolutely the most irresponsible thing to do".

Around 2.1 million people use cannabis every year, according to government figures, despite it being illegal.

Mike Power, the author of The Green Screen report, told Sky News: "The current situation, any young person with five or ten pounds can come to Camden and buy a bag of cannabis.

"They can't go to a supermarket and buy alcohol without having their identity checked and verified."

"We would argue that a digital model would enable that to be the case. So that every purchase would have to have age and ID verified before you actually bought it.

"As well as that, it would mean that you could tax every single purchase, and monitor it, and make sure that money was going directly into the taxpayers' pocket."