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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"one of those illuminating moments when a longstanding policy is revealed to be inappropriate, ineffective and utterly out of date".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?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday June 22 2018, @10:13AM (2 children)
Unless you were one of those that voted for her party
A record number of people voted for conservative MPs last year - 13,636,684. That's 1 in 5 people in the UK.
4 in 5 people did not vote for her party.
or you voted to leave the EU
17,410,742 voted to leave the EU, about 1 in 4 people in the UK.
Just because it isn't the party that you might have voted for doesn't make everyone else insane.
Even those that voted conservative may not trust her judgement. May's net approval rating is -10%, not as bad as Corbyn, but indicates that many of those 1 in 5 that voted Conservative did so because they trusted Labour even less (insert Kang/Kodos reference), or perhaps those waiting in the wings of the Tory party (Gove, Johnson, etc)
Of course in the UK's system we don't elect the executive directly (same as with the EU), so the PM, and her government only have to be concerned of the opinions of the majority of the 316 tory MPs. If May commands the votes of 159 of them, most of whom she pays with government jobs, she's safe.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 22 2018, @11:37AM
All absolutely correct - so, of those that could be bothered to have a voice and actually vote, the Conservatives gathered more votes than any other party. That is the system that the UK runs. There is a good argument for changing the voting system, but as it hasn't been made yet then we have what we have.
The same applies to leaving the EU. Of those that could be bothered to vote, the majority said leave. Its no good now saying but "I didn't want that" if that person didn't bother to vote.
My point still stands - either of the main parties would now be struggling to extricate the UK from the EU. It is easy for the opposition to say 'you are doing it wrong'. But they have the advantage of being able to say in the future that it wasn't their fault, they would have done things differently. Hard decisions have to be made and many people will not be happy with them.
I am not convinced that the majority (if it were put to a vote) would choose to legalise cannabis for recreational use. Sure the more vocal of people on sites such as ours might have that opinion, but that doesn't necessarily correlate with the whole population. As it is unlikely that this will ever be put to a referendum, then the only arguments will be between the politicians that we have elected, for better or for worse.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday June 22 2018, @02:55PM
There was 73% turnout, so your figures must include non voters, like children.
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