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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Lords back medical use of cannabis
ITN Online Thursday 22 Mar 2001 A Lords select committee report is recommending that cannabis-based drugs used for medical purposes should be legalised. It also calls for a speeding up of research into developing medicines based on the plant. The Lords select committee on science and technology says users of cannabis to ease conditions such as multiple sclerosis should not be prosecuted. The report also accuses the drugs licensing body, the Medicines Control Agency (MCA), of delaying the development of cannabis-based drugs. The study said that cannabis had a history of medical use stretching back hundreds of years. It feared the MCA's insistence on demanding new data on its toxic side effects could delay the development of drugs by up to three years. The Lords report said: "In the absence of a viable alternative medicine, and though we would not encourage smoking of cannabis, we consider it undesirable to prosecute genuine therapeutic users of cannabis who possess or grow cannabis for their own use. "This unsatisfactory situation underlines the need to legalise cannabis preparations for therapeutic use." There were 89,000 prosecutions involving cannabis in 1998. The numbers of people involved in using cannabis for therapeutic purposes is unknown, although thought to be small. Two major trials into its therapeutic uses were recently given grants worth a total of £1.5 million by the Medical Research Council. The Lords report criticised the slow pace of the studies and said the stigma surrounding cannabis was "inhibiting" research in the area. In evidence to the Lords hearing, Home Office minister Charles Clarke said the Government would not stand in the way of any MCA-approved cannabis-based drug being prescribed by doctors. One company, G W Pharmaceuticals, have claimed they could have a cannabis-based prescription medicine available by 2003. Claire Hodges, a multiple sclerosis sufferer and a member of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, said: "The report is recognising that there is a problem and we welcome that. "At the moment, the law is a nonsense. People are prosecuted for using something that eases their pain and distress, which is appalling."
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