Cannabis petition: MPs debate liberalisation of drug laws
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Version 0 of 1. Cannabis is the oldest medicine in the world, the Labour MP Paul Flynn has said, calling on the government to legalise the use of the drug for medicinal purposes. Flynn was one of a cross-party group of MPs to call for the liberalisation of cannabis laws during a Westminster Hall debate in parliament on Monday evening. The debate was called after a petition to legalise the production, sale and use of cannabis attracted more than 221,000 signatures. The Newport West MP said: “[Cannabis has] been tried and tested by tens of millions of people for 5,000 years. If there were any problems with natural cannabis it would have been apparent a long time ago, but all we’ve got is this wall of denial by governments who are afraid of the subject.” Flynn compared the attitudes in the UK towards cannabis legalisation to attitudes in the US towards gun control. “We’re getting near to a position where we look at the United States with incredulity because they don’t accept the evidence on the possession of guns,” he said. Related: Cannabis petition forces MPs to consider debating legalisation “We can all see the evidence says over and over again that the more guns that are in society the more deaths there are, the more murders that take place, they won’t accept it. “And we’re in a similar mind denial set … in many places in the world now they’ve recognised that prohibition has been a continuing disaster, a disaster more serious than the prohibition of alcohol in the United States but they refuse to recognise it.” MPs pointed to countries such as Portugal and Uruguay and US states such as Colorado that have legalised or decriminalised cannabis, arguing that the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to the benefits of doing the same in the UK. The former Conservative minister Peter Lilley said that Queen Victoria had allegedly used cannabis to relieve menstrual pain, adding: “If it’s a Victorian value then surely it can be made more widely available.” “Lots of things are morally wrong which are not against the law,” said Lilley. “Adultery is wrong. I think you shouldn’t betray one’s spouse, but you shouldn’t be put in jail if you do. “We’ve got to get used to the idea that in a free country there will be lots of moral decisions that people have to make themselves without being told by the law what to do.” Related: Cannabis: healthy benefit or deadly threat? Norman Lamb, a former Liberal Democrat health minister under the last coalition government, repeated his assertion that at least 50% of the government had smoked cannabis before. “There’s is extraordinary hypocrisy on this issue,” he said. “Senior politicians [are] frequently challenged about their use of cannabis and other drugs in their teenage and early adult years and admit to such drug use and laugh it off as a youthful indiscretion. “And apparently [they are] comfortable with thousands of their fellow countrymen and women ending up with a criminal record for doing precisely the same thing, usually people who are less fortunate than those politicians who reach the top of government.” |