Not thousands of people, millions of people. It's unusual to find anyone in the UK who's not smoked weed for periods of their lives in my age group. Yet the UK government is massively behind when it comes to legalisation.
There's a mindset in Britain that if people don't like something there will be calls to ban it and politicians are happy to oblige, as an example it's recently become illegal to use sexy women in advertising if the advertising standards agency doesn't like it.
If the bicycle was invented tomorrow it would be banned here. It's odd because when I was a kid the UK was very pro personal freedom and nosy and controlling people were mocked.