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Plainsman1963

Oct 15 2004 | Birmingham Post

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.

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