Cannabis at Glastonbury Festival

Origins: the 1970 and 1971 festivals

The first Glastonbury, held in September 1970, was a small dairy-farm gathering organised by Michael Eavis after he attended the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music earlier that summer ^[1]. It drew around 1,500 people and was steeped in the counterculture of the time — a culture in which cannabis use was routine ^[2].

The 1971 Glastonbury Fayre, organised by Andrew Kerr and Arabella Churchill and timed for the summer solstice, is the event that cemented the festival's hippie identity. Contemporary accounts and the 1972 Nicolas Roeg–produced documentary Glastonbury Fayre depict open cannabis smoking among attendees ^[3]. This was two years before the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 came fully into force in its enforcement patterns, but cannabis had already been illegal in the UK since the Dangerous Drugs Act 1928 ^[4].

The free festival years and the 1990 riot

Through the 1980s, Glastonbury overlapped with the British free festival movement and the traveller scene. The festival grew rapidly, and so did informal drug markets on site. The 1990 festival ended with the so-called 'Battle of Yeoman's Bridge,' a violent clash between travellers and security on the Monday after the event, partly rooted in disputes over control of on-site drug dealing ^[5].

Michael Eavis took a year off in 1991 to reorganise. From 1992 onwards the festival professionalised security, and the relationship with Avon and Somerset Police shifted from distant tolerance to active on-site presence ^[5].

The superfence era and modern policing

After mass fence-jumping in 2000 led to dangerous overcrowding, the festival did not run in 2001. When it returned in 2002 it had a 4.5-metre steel 'superfence' and a formal licence with Mendip District Council ^[6]. Police presence on site became permanent.

Avon and Somerset Police publish arrest figures after each festival. Drug offences — overwhelmingly possession — typically account for the majority of arrests, but in a crowd of 200,000 the numbers are small: the 2019 festival saw around 80 arrests across all offences, with drugs the largest category ^[7]. Officers have generally focused on dealers rather than personal users, a policing posture confirmed in pre-festival briefings reported by regional press ^[7].

This is the source of the widespread belief that 'weed is legal at Glasto.' It is not Strong evidence. Possession of cannabis remains a Class B offence carrying up to five years in prison under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 ^[4]. What exists at Glastonbury is discretionary, low-priority enforcement of personal use — a very different thing.

Cannabis culture on site

Several areas of the festival are associated, anecdotally, with heavier cannabis use: the Stone Circle in the King's Meadow at the top of the site, the Green Fields, and the late-night south-east corner zones of Shangri-La, Block9 and the Common Anecdote. The Stone Circle in particular has a reputation as an all-night smoking spot, especially at sunrise on the solstice ^[8].

The Green Fields area, established in the 1980s, hosts the Tipi Field, Healing Field and Greenpeace field, and reflects the festival's continuing links to the older traveller and hippie scenes ^[8]. None of this is formally drug-related programming — the festival itself runs harm reduction messaging via The Loop and on-site welfare services rather than endorsing use ^[9].

Drug-checking and harm reduction

Glastonbury has been one of the UK venues for on-site drug-checking services run by The Loop, a charity that tests substances surrendered by users and issues alerts about dangerous batches ^[9]. The Loop's work has focused mainly on MDMA, cocaine and ketamine rather than cannabis, because adulteration risk and acute-harm potential are higher for those drugs. Cannabis sold illicitly on site is not routinely tested, and contamination with synthetic cannabinoids or pesticides is a documented UK problem that festival-goers should be aware of Weak / limited ^[10].

Myths and reality

A few persistent claims are worth checking:

• 'Police don't go in.' False. Uniformed and plain-clothes officers are on site throughout ^[7].
• 'Michael Eavis approves of cannabis.' Eavis, a Methodist, has spoken publicly against hard drugs and has supported on-site policing; his position on cannabis specifically has been pragmatic rather than enthusiastic ^[5] Weak / limited.
• 'You can smoke openly anywhere.' People often do, but it remains an offence, and arrests for possession do occur each year ^[7].
• 'The Stone Circle is a legal weed zone.' There is no such zone. The Stone Circle is a tolerated gathering space, not a legal exemption No data.

The accurate summary is that Glastonbury is a place where cannabis use is visible, common and rarely punished at the personal level — but legally identical to using it on any other British field.

Sources

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