CANNABIS HANG UPS CAUSING SUFFERING

Patients are suffering excruciating pain because of a "hang up about
the 60s" which prevents doctors prescribing cannabis, according to an
MP. Peter Bradley (Lab The Wrekin) urged Ministers to allow sufferers
of conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis to receive cannabis-based
drugs. He led a debate in the House of Commons last night in which he
urged the Home Office to change the drugs regulations.

He said: "I don't think that politicians should stand between people
suffering torments we can't imagine and the medicines they need to
make life tolerable."

Cannabis has already been used to create a medicinal drug called
Sativex, developed by the UK company GW Pharmaceuticals, which is
administered by being sprayed under the patient's tongue.

But because cannabis is currently classified as a drug without
therapeutic value, along with LSD and ecstasy, doctors cannot
prescribe it. Due to a quirk in the rules laid down by the Home
Office, those patients who took part in the clinical trials of the
drug, which ended two years ago, are the only ones allowed to continue
using it. Mr Bradley said: "The Government has already reclassified
cannabis as a recreational drug. It's a very small step now to
reclassify it as a medicine and that would be the right and
compassionate thing to do. "Patients should not be suffering because
politicians have a hang-up about the 1960s. Medicinal cannabis should
prescribed not proscribed." He urged Ministers to allow doctors to
prescribe it. He told MPs that he became involved in the campaign to
legalise medicinal cannabis when a former drugs squad officer
suffering from multiple sclerosis visited his surgery.