UK: Appeal Ruling Due in 'Chronic Pain' Cannabis Cases

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Mike Taylor

PA News

Friday 27 May 2005

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Three appeal judges are handing down their ruling today on a series of test
cases to decide whether people who use or supply cannabis to relieve
chronic pain should be exempt from prosecution for possessing the drug.

Defence lawyers argued at a hearing in February that conduct which would
otherwise be unlawful was "excused or justified by the need to avoid a
greater evil".

Cannabis was more effective than conventional forms of pain relief and did
not have the potentially serious and life-threatening side effects of
alternative treatments, the Court of Appeal was told.

The defence of "necessity" should be available to anyone who used cannabis
to remove or alleviate the greater evil of chronic pain.

The Court of Appeal heard that one of the appellants, Barry Quayle, had
both legs amputated below the knee and suffered pain from damaged tissue
and "phantom limb" sensation.

In another case, Reay Wales had used cannabis to relieve the pain of
serious bone and pancreas conditions.

Five people have challenged their convictions: Quayle, 38, from Market
Rasen, Lincolnshire; Wales, 53, of Ipswich; Graham Kenny, 25, from Shipley,
West Yorkshire; and Anthony Taylor, 54, and May Po Lee, 28, both from London.

All were given either a fine, community service or suspended jail sentence.

In a cross-appeal, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith QC has asked the court
to rule, as a point of law, on the issue of "necessity" in the case of
Jeffrey Ditchfield, of north Wales, who was acquitted of possessing the
drug with intent to supply it to victims of serious and painful medical
conditions.

Mr Ditchfield was cleared on the basis that he had a defence of "necessity"
or "duress of circumstance" when he gave cannabis to chronic pain sufferers.

Whatever the appeal judges decide on the legal issues raised by the
Attorney General in his case, Mr Ditchfield cannot now be convicted of the
offence.

The appeals are seen as a test of the law's attitude to cannabis in such
cases in the light of it being downgraded to a Class C drug.

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