MP Renews ’Medicinal’ Cannabis Call
A Labour MP will today renew his calls for the Government to reclassify cannabis as a medicine rather than a recreational drug.
Peter Bradley, who represents The Wrekin in Shropshire, said it would be a "very small step" and "the right and compassionate thing to do".
One of his constituents, a former West Midlands Police undercover drugs squad officer, uses cannabis to alleviate the crippling symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
Mr Bradley has highlighted the ex-policewoman’s situation and called for the legalisation of medicinal cannabis for the last four years.
GPs should be allowed to prescribe cannabis-based drugs to people with MS and other conditions even though they have not yet been licensed by the Home Office, he said.
Speaking before an adjournment debate in the House of Commons, Mr Bradley said enough was known about the therapeutic properties and side effects of cannabis.
People with MS and other painful conditions should be able to make "informed decisions" about what is best for them, he added.
"I don’t think that politicians should stand between people suffering torments we can’t imagine and the medicines they need to make life tolerable", he went on.
The Government has already reclassified cannabis as a recreational drug. It’s a very small step now to reclassify it as a medicine and that would be the right and compassionate thing to do.
"Patients should not be suffering because politicians have a hang-up about the 1960s. Medicinal cannabis should prescribed not proscribed".
Mr Bradley will urge ministers to transfer the drug from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations.
Doctors would then be able to legally prescribe a new under-the-tongue spray to individual patients whom they think it will help.
The MP said the Home Office had informed him of delays in the testing and approval of a cannabis-based drug called Sativex.
The Home Office agreed in September to allow the drug to be made available to those who had participated in the clinical trials.
But because cannabis is currently classified with LSD and Ecstasy as a drug without therapeutic value, it cannot currently be prescribed to others.
