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"one of those illuminating moments when a longstanding policy is revealed to be inappropriate, ineffective and utterly out of date".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: 4, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Friday June 22 2018, @01:27PM
A huge factor you're omitting completely is this: Even if the theoretical cancer risk etc from pot smoke where the same as tobacco, just how much pot do you think people will smoke? Smokers often smoke 1/2 to 2 or more packs a day. Typical weed these days will bake someone for hours with like three hits. I just don't see the comparison. And also, as others have pointed out, there are edibles as well.