Campaigners say one million in UK use drug illegally to deal with illnesses

Experts says cannabis can trigger psychotic episodes and be addictive

Policy reform group also wants companies to be

Cannabis should be legalised for ‘medicinal’ use in the UK, a major report concludes today

Cannabis should be legalised for ‘medicinal’ use in the UK, a major report concludes today.

The controversial document, published by a cross-party group of MPs and peers, calls on the Government to allow sick people to grow their own cannabis under licence.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform also wants companies to be allowed to import or grow the drug, and for ministers to strip away legal controls so that it becomes less regulated than many painkillers.

But experts said last night that legalising cannabis would be a dangerous step, warning that the drug can trigger psychotic episodes and be addictive.

Other critics claimed that it was the thin end of the wedge. They said the group behind the report simply wants cannabis to be legalised for recreational use and is using medical arguments as a smokescreen.

But Baroness Meacher, its co-chairman, insisted the continued ban on cannabis is ‘irrational’. She claims one million people in the UK are already illegally using cannabis to cope with their illnesses.

Lady Meacher, a cross-bench peer, said: ‘The findings of our inquiry and review of evidence from across the world are clear. Cannabis works as a medicine for a number of medical conditions.’

However, Professor Colin Drummond, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: ‘Cannabis carries significant mental health risks for some individuals. Its use increases the risk of developing psychosis, depression and anxiety.’

Other experts said previous research has also suggested that cannabis can act as a ‘gateway’ to other, more serious drugs – an aspect ignored by the report.

It was part-funded by a charity founded by George Soros, the US billionaire who is determined to see cannabis completely legalised around the world.

BILLIONAIRE US BUSINESSMAN PART-FUNDED DRUG REPORT A billionaire US businessman part-funded the controversial report calling for cannabis to be legalised for medical use. George Soros set up the Open Society Foundations. It is one of the funders of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform’s report. Mr Soros, who is worth an estimated £18billion, is considered to have been instrumental in the softening of drugs laws in the US. His aim, according to his auto-biography, is to establish a ‘strictly controlled distribution network’ of legally-available drugs. Mr Soros, a hedge fund tycoon, helped fund the campaign to legalise medical marijuana in the first US states in the late 1990s. One of his foundation’s key aims is to change the perception of drug use around the world – treating the problem as a public health rather than a criminal issue. Advertisement

Mr Soros, who has spent £150million since 1994 campaigning for drug legalisation, is largely credited with the change of laws in the US, where 26 states have now legalised medical marijuana. David Raynes, of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, which opposes relaxation of the UK’s drug laws, dismissed the report as being ‘without merit’.

He added: ‘This report represents anecdotal folk medicine. It is being pushed almost entirely by a few parliamentarians and users who have failed to get legalisation for “recreational use” any other way.’

The group calls for a new system for ‘grow your own’ cannabis for a ‘limited number of patients’. It wants companies to be allowed to grow or import cannabis for medical use, along the lines of a scheme being proposed in Germany. And it wants cannabis for medical use to be downgraded in the legal system from schedule one to schedule four – putting it below barbiturates, painkillers such as tramadol and sedatives such as temazepam.

Baroness Meacher claims one million people in the UK are already illegally using cannabis to cope with their illnesses (file photo)

PANEL LED BY AYATOLLAH OF DOPE: BARONESS MEACHER The committee that made the controversial call for cannabis to be legalised for medical use is headed by campaigners for drug liberalisation. Baroness Meacher, co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, has been nicknamed the ‘Ayatollah of Dope Decriminalisation’ by critics. She sparked fury three years ago by calling for the legalisation of cannabis. In a report, she said youngsters should be encouraged to switch from drinking alcohol to taking drugs, insisting some drugs are ‘a good deal safer’ than tobacco and alcohol. The former social worker spoke out after the group – made up of senior MPs and peers – also called for the possession and use of heroin, ecstasy and crack cocaine to be decriminalised altogether. Meanwhile, her co-chairman, Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, was among a group of celebrities including Sir Richard Branson and actresses Julie Christie and Dame Judi Dench who signed a letter in June 2011 pleading with then Prime Minister David Cameron to decriminalise drug possession, if a review of drugs laws found they had failed. Another senior member of the group was Lib Dem peer Baroness Walmsley, who led a review into drugs in 2001 which called for ecstasy to be downgraded from Class A to Class B. Advertisement

Offences involving cannabis currently come with up to 14 years in prison – a schedule four offence would not involve a jail term at all.

The report stops short of recommending that people ‘smoke’ cannabis – warning of a possible, ‘yet unproven’, risk of lung cancer.

Instead, a spokesman said, users could eat the drug, or ‘vape’ it using equipment similar to e-cigarette devices. Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who co-chairs the group, said: ‘Many hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are already taking cannabis for primarily medical reasons.

‘It is totally unacceptable that they should face the added stress of having to break the law to access their medicine. This a matter of compassion and human rights.’

During the seven-month inquiry, the group took evidence from 623 patients, doctors and experts. It also commissioned neurologist Professor Mike Barnes to review 20,000 studies going back to the 1960s.

His report concluded that medical cannabis helps alleviate chronic pain, anxiety and muscle problems, particularly linked to multiple sclerosis and the side effects of chemotherapy. ‘The results are clear,’ he said. ‘Cannabis has a medical benefit for a wide range of conditions.’

AUTHOR DID NOT DECLARE HIS LINKS TO LOBBY GROUP Professor Mike Barnes is linked to a group which wants to see cannabis legalised for recreational use The author of today’s report into cannabis is linked to a group which wants to see the drug legalised for recreational use. Neurologist Professor Mike Barnes, clinical director at a chain of private clinics called the Christchurch Group, was paid by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform to write a 169-page review of evidence into the drug. The report, which was co-written by his daughter Dr Jennifer Barnes, a clinical psychologist in Newcastle, is billed as ‘the most extensive review of evidence in the literature in modern times’. Yet nowhere in the review does Pro-fessor Barnes declare his links to CLEAR, a campaign group seeking to end ‘the prohibition of cannabis’ for all users, both recreational and medical. Professor Barnes, is described on the group’s website as a member of the CLEAR advisory board. When approached by the Mail, Professor Barnes insisted he does not support general legalisation and said he would resign from the organisation. He said he was asked six weeks ago to ‘advise CLEAR on their campaign to legalise cannabis for medical purposes’. He added: ‘I was happy to do so. I was not asked to support their broader campaign on general recreational usage and I do not support general legalisation.’ Advertisement

But his report concedes that the research he reviewed was ‘far from satisfactory in that it contains many small scale studies as well as case reports and anecdotal evidence but very few good quality trials’.

The report is also contradicted by a major review led by King’s College London in 2014, in which academics concluded that smoking cannabis is highly addictive, can cause mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs.

Two drugs already exist in the UK that are based on cannabis – but each drug can only be used for the conditions for which it was licensed.

Nabilone, a synthetic cannabis-type drug, has been available since 1982 as a hospital treatment for nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. And in 2010 Sativex became the first medicine based on herbal cannabis for use in the UK. The mouth spray can only be prescribed to treat the loss of muscle control experienced by MS patients.