For the second time in three years, the U.K. House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology is urging Parliament to hasten their efforts to legalize marijuana-based medications, and is demanding they exempt medical marijuana patients from criminal prosecution until such drugs are developed.
“In the absence of a viable alternative medicine, … we consider it undesirable to prosecute genuine therapeutic users of cannabis who possess or grow cannabis for their own use,” committee members affirmed in a ten-page report released yesterday. “This unsatisfactory situation underlines the need to legalize cannabis preparations for therapeutic use.”
On this matter, Lords criticized drug regulatory officials of “dragging their feet,” and accused the Medicines Control Agency – United Kingdom’s equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration – of failing to deal with marijuana “in the same impartial manner as other medicines.” Lords blamed MCA officials of purposely ignoring “the long history of safe therapeutic cannabis use,” and questioned their assertion that marijuana-based therapeutics be classified as “new medicines.”
“The MCA persists in treating … cannabis [and its constituents] … as ‘new medicines’ though [they] … have a long history of human use and appeared in the British Pharmacopoeia until 1948,” they said.
Lords called the MCA’s attitude toward cannabis “overly cautious,” and alleged that their approach will needlessly delay the legal production of marijuana-based medicines another two or three years.
“Patients with severe conditions such as multiple sclerosis are being denied the right to make informed choices about their medication,” they charged. “Patients and doctors should certainly be informed about the [possible health risks] the MCA have raised, but these concerns should not prevent them from having access to what promises to be the only effective medication available to them.”
The Lords most recent report follows a 1998 inquiry that found the evidence in support of the therapeutic benefit of medical marijuana sufficient to justify changing Britain’s drug laws. Parliament summarily rejected their recommendation, but did agree to sponsor clinical trials regarding marijuana’s medical efficacy.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Foundation Executive Director, at (202) 483-8751. To access the report, please visit: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/
