DOCTORS CALL FOR LEGALISED CANNABIS

A group of leading doctors have become the first medical professionals
to call for cannabis to be legalised for recreational use.

The doctors, from the British Medical Association's Scottish committee
on public health medicine, believe that a change in the law would help
to control the spread of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

They will put forward a motion at the BMA's annual conference in
Belfast next month asking for the organisation's support in their
campaign to have the drug legalised for "medical and recreational use".

The doctors claim that a refusal to legalise cannabis encourages
people to view the drug in the same category as heroin or cocaine,
leading to the assumption that taking hard drugs is no more harmful
than smoking a joint.

"I think more than half the population would support legislation if
you laid out the evidence," George Venters, the committee chairman,
said in an interview printed in Scottish editions of the Mail on Sunday.

A spokesman for the BMA said: "This is only one committee of the BMA.
It is not the policy of the BMA as a whole."