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posted by mrpg on Friday June 22 2018, @04:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the till-next-round dept.

Hague's call to legalise cannabis rejected by government

The government has rejected a call from Lord Hague to consider legalising the recreational use of cannabis. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, the former Tory leader said the war on cannabis had been "irreversibly lost" and a change of policy was needed. His call was prompted by the case of a boy with epilepsy who was given a special licence to use cannabis oil.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has told MPs there will be a review of the medical use of cannabis in the UK. The Home Office has set up an expert panel to review the rules on the therapeutic use of the drug, but a spokesman stressed that the existing laws on the recreational use of cannabis would not be changed.

[...] Last week officials at Heathrow Airport confiscated Billy Caldwell's cannabis oil, which the 12-year-old's mother Charlotte had been attempting to bring into the UK from Canada. The Home Office returned some of the medicine after protests from Ms Caldwell, and assurances from the medical team treating Billy that the treatment was necessary. [...] Lord Hague said the debate about Billy Caldwell was "one of those illuminating moments when a longstanding policy is revealed to be inappropriate, ineffective and utterly out of date". By returning the medicine to the Caldwell family, the Home Office had "implicitly conceded that the law has become indefensible", he said.

[...] Prime Minister Theresa May remains firmly opposed to legalisation or decriminalisation of the drug because of the harm she says it does to individual users and communities.

Guardian editorial. Also at The Telegraph.

See also: Cannabis: What are the risks of recreational use?


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  • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday June 22 2018, @05:47AM (5 children)

    by Whoever (4524) on Friday June 22 2018, @05:47AM (#696602) Journal

    Britain is the largest exporter of cannabis products.

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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:54AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:54AM (#696603)

    Hypocrisy in Britain

    Britain is the largest exporter of cannabis products.

    How that hypocrisy exactly? I'd say it's... umm.... protecting an export for strategic reasons; you want the local market to swallow the supply?

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Friday June 22 2018, @06:48AM (3 children)

      by anubi (2828) on Friday June 22 2018, @06:48AM (#696609) Journal

      New one on me... I thought it was Mexico and Northern California

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:09AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:09AM (#696615)
        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Friday June 22 2018, @07:55AM (1 child)

          by anubi (2828) on Friday June 22 2018, @07:55AM (#696628) Journal

          Ahhh... maybe the key word is "legal".

          I don't think very much of the Mexican stuff ( if any ) is "legal". And the Northern California stuff is sure questionable.

          However, I have a neighbor kid who moved up to Northern California, and is doing far better farming the stuff than I ever did doing aerospace engineering.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 22 2018, @04:05PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday June 22 2018, @04:05PM (#696794)

            Aerospace engineering has been a terrible major for a very long time. Back when I was in college (early/mid 90s) we made fun of the AEs, saying they were going to be unemployed. It was probably great back in the 40s-early 70s, but after that your main job prospects were in defense contractors working on turkeys like the F-35, or trying to get into someplace like Boeing. More recently you could work at one of the new space companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin. But overall the number of job slots just isn't very much, compared to software engineering for instance.