LORDS URGE LEGAL USE OF CANNABIS

Progress towards a cannabis-based medicine for conditions it can allegedly
help, such as multiple sclerosis, is too slow, a House of Lords committee
said yesterday.

It urged the government to change the law so doctors can legally prescribe
cannabis derivatives as soon as they are scientifically approved.

The Lords select committee on science and technology has re-entered the
fray after receiving the brush-off from the government in November 1998,
when it recommended that doctors should be allowed to prescribe cannabis
derivatives; a finding the government rejected.

Yesterday the committee published a ten-page report on the progress towards
producing a legitimate medicine from the drug.

The Medical Research Council has commissioned two trials from scientists to
establish the principle that cannabis derivatives can help relieve pain.
However, the committee is concerned that it may take a long time for
anything practical to emerge from trials.

The committee is more encouraged by the progress being made by the GW
Pharmaceuticals, which is about to embark on the large-scale trials of
cannabis-based treatments.

The report says the government's attitude lately has been more encouraging,
following a period in which it feared that "permitting therapeutic
preparations of cannabis to be prescribed would be interpreted by the
public as a move towards allowing recreational use".

Lord Perry of Walton, a committee member, said yesterday that he hoped
there might be a cannabis-derived medicine on the market within two years.

However, he was alarmed by a decision by the licensing body, the Medicines
Control Agency, that past evidence on the toxicity of the cannabis
derivative cannabidiol was not good enough. Additional testing could slow
development of a licensed medicine by two to three years.