Beautiful Virgin Islands

Friday, Oct 03, 2025

Growing cannabis on Britain’s smallest islands: Increasing demand fertilises supply

Growing cannabis on Britain’s smallest islands: Increasing demand fertilises supply

The ice-cream parlours and music halls of the Isle of Man were once packed each summer with workers who travelled ten hours on a steamer to a Manx beach to escape the cotton mills of Lancashire for a week. “You see the best of the working class of the north away from their factories and workshops,” The Spectator informed its readers in 1880. “Their loud provincial tones are heard in boisterous merriment.”
Since the Costa del Sol destroyed the island’s tourist trade, there is much less merriment, provincial or otherwise. But Man has reinvented itself, first as an offshore financial centre and most recently also as a hub for online gaming firms. Finance accounts for about a third of gdp; e-gaming 17%. Tourism makes up less than 1%.

Now Manxmen want a slice of another fast-growing industry: cannabis cultivation. And they need not beg permission from Whitehall. The island is a crown dependency, meaning that though the queen is head of state, it is self-governing. Last month its parliament approved a plan to sell licences to grow and export cannabis for medical use.

It is not the only outcrop to spot an opportunity. The channel island of Jersey, another crown dependency, also smells something in the air. It issued its first cannabis-production licence in December, to a firm that plans to grow the plant in a 75,000-sq-ft greenhouse. Its minister for economic development even flew to Canada to address a cannabis industry conference.

Why the sudden interest? Legal cultivation of cannabis was unheard of outside America until recently; it has leapt about 200-fold globally since 2000, according to the International Narcotics Control Board, an independent monitoring agency. And rules on its medical use are being relaxed across Europe. Britain followed suit in 2018, permitting limited prescription by registered specialists. Brightfield Group, a research firm, reckons the British medical-cannabis market will grow from a relatively paltry £9.6m in 2020 to £293m in 2025.

Britain is already a big player in the global market. It exports more medical cannabis than anywhere else, thanks to gw Pharmaceuticals, a company that uses the plant to make drugs for patients with multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. Yet new players grumble that the Home Office, which grants cultivation licences, is risk-averse. gw and its suppliers are the only firms permitted to grow cannabis potent enough for medical use. The department’s “starting point is effectively to treat anyone making an application as a criminal”, claims a lawyer who advises cannabis firms.

Both islands hope to outmanoeuvre the mainland. Laurence Skelly, the Isle of Man’s enterprise minister, promises the sort of business-friendly regulation that helped lure gaming firms to the island. And the 0% standard rate of corporation tax in both places—compared with 19% on the mainland—will help ensure that the islands don’t blow their chance.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition of the Economist under the headline “Pot luck”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×