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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: MSP Margo in call over cannabis laws
Evening Times, Glasgow
Thursday 03 Jul 2003 INDEPENDENT MSP Margo MacDonald today called on the Executive to seek the public's views on whether cannabis laws should be changed. The move came as hospital staff were monitoring the condition of a multiple sclerosis sufferer who ended up in court accused of supplying the drug. Biz Ivol, 55, is believed to have taken an overdose after her controversial court case collapsed. She admitted distributing the drug in special chocolates for use in pain relief. But she pleaded not guilty on the grounds she believed she was doing nothing wrong. The Crown Office yesterday dropped the charges against Ms Ivol, who had threatened to take her own life once the case was concluded, due to her failing health. She was found unconscious by a neighbour at her home in South Ronaldsay, Orkney, and taken to hospital, where her condition has been described as "stable". Ms MacDonald, a regional MSP for the Lothians, has lodged a motion at Holyrood calling for the Executive to hold a public consultation into whether people think cannabis use should be allowed for medicinal purposes. The former Nationalist MSP lodged another motion in 1999 calling for a parliamentary commission to examine the reasons why people used cannabis. Today she said: "I think we've now had four years in which it has become absolutely obvious that our drug policies don't work. "Why on earth are we still forcing people like Biz Ivol to go through the indignities and the trauma that she has had to go through?" The MSP likened cannabis use for medicinal purposes to people who take a brandy before going to bed to ward off the cold. She added: "There are two different questions to be resolved here. One is the question of the humanity and the common sense of allowing an MS sufferer to gain relief from pain this way. "The other is the widespread acceptance that cannabis is a drug of choice that will not go away any more quickly than a nice wee white chablis." An Executive spokesman said: "Issues around drugs classification are the responsibility of the UK Government and any separate consultation in Scotland on this issue would be a token one. "On the medicinal potential of cannabis, the Home Office has already indicated it would be prepared to approve the use of a cannabis-based medicine if the required trials are successful."
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