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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Therapeutic cannabis use endorsed by House of Lords
Surgery Door Friday 23 Mar 2001 An influential House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has said that therapeutic cannabis users should not live in fear of prosecution, and once again criticised the government's failure to help speed up research into the therapeutic use of cannabis. In a recently published report - the committee's second on the subject - the committee expressed its concern at the "slow progress made by the two Medical Research Council (MRC)-funded trials" and suggested that bureaucratic obstacles are impeding research into medical use of the substance. Two cannabis trials, allocated more than £1.5 million in public funding, are currently under way at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and Hammersmith Hospital in London. However, recruitment of 600 participants for the Plymouth trial, which was launched in April, has only just begun, and details of the London trial, announced in August, have yet to be finalised. The committee noted that the "time scale for developing usable therapeutic preparations from these trials is extremely long". The Medicines Control Agency (MCA) was also criticised by the committee for insisting on classifying cannabis as a "new medicine", and ignoring its long medicinal history. "The government and the MCA are treating a long-established herbal extract as if it were just another new synthetic chemical, and are thus not making an informed scientific judgement," the report said. However, it welcomed the fact that the MCA very recently agreed to consider modifying its position on cannabis and its derivatives. The committee also recommended that while it does not wish to encourage cannabis use by the wider population, it was "undesirable" for therapeutic cannabis users to be prosecuted. It said the fact that the law does not distinguish between recreational and therapeutic uses of the drug "underlines the need to legalise cannabis preparations for therapeutic use," as swiftly as possible. Responding to the report, the Home Office said, "If clinical trials into cannabis are successful and lead to a medical preparation which is approved by the Medicines Control Agency, the government has made it clear that it would be willing to amend the Misuse of Drugs Regulations to allow the prescribing of such a medicine." In November 1998, the Science and Technology Committee published a report suggesting that doctors should be permitted to prescribe cannabis. In an unusual move, the government rejected the House of Lords report leading to accusations of inflexibility in refusing to reconsider drug legislation for the benefit of chronically ill people.
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