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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Lords urge legal use of cannabis
Guardian, The
Thursday 22 Mar 2001 Subj: UK: Lords urge legal use of cannabis Date: Thursday March 22, 2001 Source: Guardian, The Lords urge legal use of cannabis Sarah Boseley, health editor Thursday March 22, 2001 Progress towards a cannabis-based medicine for conditions it can allegedly help, such as multiple sclerosis, is too slow, a House of Lords committee said yesterday. It urged the government to change the law so doctors can legally prescribe cannabis derivatives as soon as they are scientifically approved. The Lords select committee on science and technology has re- entered the fray after receiving the brush-off from the government in November 1998, when it recommended that doctors should be allowed to prescribe cannabis derivatives; a finding the government rejected. Yesterday the committee published a ten-page report on the progress towards producing a legitimate medicine from the drug. The Medical Research Council has commissioned two trials from scientists to establish the principle that cannabis derivatives can help relieve pain. However, the committee is concerned that it may take a long time for anything practical to emerge from trials. The committee is more encouraged by the progress being made by the GW Pharmaceuticals, which is about to embark onthe large-scale trials of cannabis-based treatments. The report says the government's attitude lately has been more encouraging, following a period in which it feared that "permitting therapeutic preparations of cannabis to be prescribed would be interpreted by the public as a move towards allowing recreational use". Lord Perry of Walton, a committee member, said yesterday that he hoped there might be a cannabis-derived medicine on the market within two years. However, he was alarmed by a decision by the licensing body, the Medicines Control Agency, that past evidence on the toxicity of the cannabis derivative cannabidiol was not good enough. Additional testing could slow development of a licensed medicine by two to three years.
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