Depending on your geographical location, it's highly likely that you have had some sort of encounter with those who work in law enforcement, but the extent to which this has had an impact will vary wildly from place to place. In the UK, it's often a case of what some may call a 'postcode lottery' as there is no consistency of approach from place to place.

What this means is that possession of something as minuscule as a joint or less than a gram of weed might result in a slap on the wrist and an informal warning not to do it again in some towns while it might lead to an arrest and subsequent legal action if you were a few miles away.

This sense of imbalance and injustice reflects how ridiculous the continued prohibition of cannabis is in the UK. Indeed, the laws are there to be consistently applied if they are deemed viable and relevant? What makes things worse is that this issue highlights the complete hypocrisy of the UK government. They have given licenses to companies to grow cannabis to make medicine (Sativex/Epidolex).

However, they still maintain that it has to be kept listed as an illegal substance because it is a danger to society (apparently, it presents no benefits to the user). Add in the fact that police are being given increasingly intrusive powers to stop and search people (which is overwhelmingly enacted under the premise that the police officers can 'smell cannabis' on a person or in a vehicle). You can understand why this is an increasingly frustrating state to exist in.

A few years back, my friends and I were heading out to a party when we got pulled over. The initial stop was started because the police believed too many people were in the car; once they saw that they were mistaken, it changed to 'we have reason to believe there are illicit substances contained within the vehicle.' At that point, the police ordered us out of the car and made us stand in handcuffs while our pockets and the contents of the vehicle were tipped out onto the floor.

After an extensive search, a small tin containing tobacco, rolling papers, and about 0.5g of resin was located under the passenger seat. The officer in charge acted like he had hit the jackpot and demanded to know who it belonged to. Nobody admitted it was theirs (it could have been in the car for ages for all we knew), so we were all bundled into the back of a police van and taken to the station for questioning. I spent the next seventeen hours in a cell.

When I was finally brought in for questioning, I was interrogated for another hour about my non-existent knowledge of the tin. It didn't matter what I said: I was guilty until proven innocent. It was the first time I had ever had a run-in with the police, and I was genuinely shocked by their attitude towards me.

I mean, I understand that they had a job to do, but the minuscule quantity of hash was so laughable that I couldn't see any justification for me being treated in this way. Eventually, they released me without charge, but they told me that I was now 'on the radar' and should watch who I associated with. Ridiculous.

I tried to move past it, but that nagging fear hung over me daily. It didn't help that even though I genuinely had no idea about the tin from that night, I was regularly consuming cannabis to help with my health issues and had to go out most days to get an eighth or a quarter. The fact that so much had been made about such a small quantity made me wonder what would happen if I was ever actually caught in possession of something larger than half a gram.

One night I was walking to a pub where I worked with one of my friends when we were grabbed by plain-clothes police officers, shoved against a wall, and then searched on the street on 'suspicion of dealing.' Again, we had nothing on us, but one of the same officers from the previous occasion was there and made no denial that we were being watched very closely.

Living in a small town meant that any possibility of an arrest for possession was seen as some sort of 'jewel in the crown,' from what I could tell, and the old adage of being 'guilty by association' was ringing more accurate than ever. Suddenly I felt like public enemy number one. A feeling that has never really gone away, if I'm honest.

After an apparent report by a concerned person in the local vicinity, I also had the pleasure of opening my door to almost a dozen officers one afternoon who promptly stormed into my house and proceeded to tear it apart at the seams. If you've never been involved in a police search, I can assure you that it is not a particularly pleasant experience to live through.

When they arrived, my friends and I admitted to having an eighth of hash broken up with tobacco ready to be smoked - we promptly gave it to them. They then spent almost two hours ripping the house to shreds and found nothing else. I was then arrested, questioned, and subsequently charged. The result was a criminal record and a five-year caution that could seriously limit my career choices in the future.

A few months later, I visited a friend in London and was surprised by how brazen people were with smoking and even selling weed. I saw police officers standing less than ten feet away from someone smoking a spliff, and they paid them almost no attention. I asked my friend about getting hold of something to smoke while I was down for a visit, and they nonchalantly pointed down an alley and told me to "Just go and ask for a ten bag" from anyone I saw. It was as easy as it sounded, and even though I felt apprehensive at first, the feeling quickly subsided.

The next thing you knew, I was sitting in a busy public park rolling up a joint and blazing away like it was completely legal. It put things into perspective. When you are fortunate enough to live in a relatively crime-free area, it seems like the police have to go out of their way to criminalize misdemeanor behaviors to a greater extent because they have to prove their worth.

While petty dealing seems to be given the 'blind eye treatment' in major cities, minimal possession is often treated like the unearthing of some mastermind of the criminal underworld in towns and villages. The issue remains that the law is the same across all of these locations - it is only the focus of the police that changes - so how can there be any semblance of fairness, logic, and reason when the whole system is so flawed?I wonder if this is an issue globally, as people often find ways to exploit legal loopholes to avoid persecution. For example, I understand the difference between states and their independent legislation in the US and what it means. 

People need to be aware of their rights and any specific distinctions that may affect them, but is there a similar level of variation between areas within state or county lines? Do some police officers turn a blind eye to petty misdemeanor possession while others are more gung-ho? It's strange to think that our fundamental human rights are often lost amongst the chaos of countless counter-productive policies and ideologies.

Currently, I have to take serious risks every month to procure my supply of cannabis for self-medicating and providing care to my wife, who has a life-limiting condition. I now live about twenty minutes from a major city where cannabis is almost accepted as a part of everyday life (and largely ignored by the police). I am acutely aware that any of my neighbors could ring the police to report the smell of cannabis wafting from my window. Add to that the fact that I have almost a decade's worth of Weed World sitting in the room I tend to smoke in, and you can practically imagine the police officer's face lighting up as they try to put two and two together during an impromptu raid.

That's before they even know that I write for the magazine too (something which I have to keep secret from many people in my life simply because of their perception of it).

Ironically, my wife should qualify for legal access to cannabis. Still, it's becoming an impossible task to get to that point, and even if we were successful, it is unlikely we could afford a legal prescription (it costs roughly five times what you would pay on the streets to refill a script legally).