Reality Check: Could legalising cannabis raise £1bn?
DURHAM CONSTABULARY
The claim: The Liberal Democrat manifesto says that legalising cannabis would raise £1bn for the Exchequer.
Reality Check verdict: £1bn seems like a reasonable estimate, although most of the figures used to make it are based on uncertain figures about currently illegal activities.
When the Liberal Democrats were in the coalition government, they asked the Treasury to work out a costing for this policy.
It was never published, but was obtained by the BBC's Newsnight programme in 2015.
It estimated that 2.2 million people aged 16 to 59 had used cannabis the previous year - smoking a total of 216 tonnes.
It looked at a report from the Institute for Social and Economic Research, which estimated that legalising cannabis could raise tax revenues of between £400m and £900m in England and Wales.
Adding the benefits from things such as reduced police and court costs would take that up to between £500m and £1.25bn a year.
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