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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"one of those illuminating moments when a longstanding policy is revealed to be inappropriate, ineffective and utterly out of date".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, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @10:04AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @10:04AM (#696659)

    If that were true, people who chew/dip tobacco would not develop cancers of the mouth/gums/lips but they do.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 22 2018, @10:31AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @10:31AM (#696666) Journal

    You have a point [wikipedia.org]

    This doesn't mean smoking MJ is safe.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 22 2018, @04:08PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday June 22 2018, @04:08PM (#696797)

      Smoking MJ is much safer than tobacco, for one very simple reason: volume.

      Ask any MJ smoker how much they smoke. Unless they're a very heavy user, they're probably just recreational user who lights up a little on the weekends or maybe a bit on weeknights. It's not addictive the way nicotine is, and they don't smoke continuously throughout the day the way that cigarette smokers do. The total volume of material they smoke is therefor a tiny fraction of that of a typical tobacco user. Therefore, they're just not going to have all the problems tobacco users do, just like an occasional wine drinker isn't going to have the problems that an alcoholic does.