Cannabis

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I want briefly to look at the body of evidence from overseas which clearly demonstrates that a more sensitive and targeted approach to the use of cannabinoids can bring positive results. In the USA, those states which have medical marijuana laws see lower rates of opiate overdose.

A recent study indicates a much lower use of opiates by pain sufferers using cannabis as treatment. This year a study has shown a reduced incidence of opioid-related hospitalisations in those states and according to the world health rankings the current drug-related death rate, mainly caused by opiate use, for the UK is 3.83 per 100,000. This compares to the Netherlands, which has the most-established scheme for medicinal cannabis in Europe, of 0.63. This means that the UK has a rate for drug-related deaths more than six times higher than that of the Netherlands. Does the Minister have any comment on these figures, or on the letter, published in the Lancet this June, from Dr David Nutt of Imperial? He notes that in his view the UK Government, on the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, made two problematic changes to the UK drug control regulations of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. First, they put into effect new very wide-ranging bans against a whole range of synthetic cannabinoids and, secondly, they rejected an appeal by senior UK scientists to remove THCV from Schedule 1, the highest level of control in the Act. Both decisions have substantial impacts on the UK’s research communities.

To make these drugs illegal and prevent others replacing them, the ACMD recommended that the whole chemical series be banned. However, many of this now illegal series are contained in current medicines and to get around this problem the Home Office exempted these and seven other medicines that would otherwise have become illegal. This exemption-based approach has, unfortunately, a fatal flaw: most, if not all, of these drugs were derived from a chemical series that contain precursors from which other medicines might be developed. Now these are illegal, and anyone caught supplying them is liable to up to 14 years in prison. These potential penalties will have a chilling, possibly fatal impact on pharmaceutical drug discovery in the UK, because complying with the regulations adds a vast cost burden to the pharmacology industry and to academic researchers. Dr Nutt found it concerning that the pharmaceutical experts on the ACMD did not appear to foresee this problem. Worse, it appears that the new regulations were not subject to proper consultation with the academic research community and the pharmaceutical industry.

History suggests that earlier bans on synthetic cannabinoids had little effect on their use. I fear it is likely that this new law could fail in its primary objective and badly damage UK research.