Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-12-10
Topic: Health
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): What a terrific debate to have the privilege of taking part in. I have spoken on this subject before, so I will try to keep my remarks to a minimum, because many of them are already on the record, and I want to respond to the points raised in the debate First, I record an interest—it is not a financial interest—as I chair the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group Ltd. I am unpaid for it and have no stake in it, but it is a think-tank that I have set up to try to get evidence-based policy delivered and to make the case on drug policy in its widest forms. We are dealing today with the opportunities we have missed due to the absence of drugs from the development of medicine. Given also the awful criminal justice consequences of our wider drugs policy over 60 years, I believe it is vital to get proper evidence into this space to guide our policy. That is why I welcome the Government’s drug strategy, published just a few days ago, with its commitment to evidence and data, and it is on evidence and data that we should be formulating policies It has been a terrific privilege over the past four years to work with the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), who has become my friend in this cause. To colleagues, and in particular to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher)—she gave a very brave speech to juxtapose the almost unanswerable case of her constituent with the wider challenge of exercising our duty as Members of Parliament—when she says she wants to oppose the Bill, I say to her, "Not yet." The issues that have been engaged in here, and the debate that is being had, deserves to go to a Committee of this House so that discussion can continue. It would be quite wrong to oppose this Bill on Second Reading. It is fine that, after all the efforts of the Government, who have been trying to engage with the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington to find a route that they could support, we have not yet been able to get that route, but let us continue that discussion in Committee. The debate will continue anyway; we are trying to find the right construction of our analysis of the evidence in order to arrive at a better answer than we have today The raw emotion engaged by the magnificent speech from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), and the emotion surrounding speeches made by other colleagues on behalf of their constituents, is incredibly powerful in its own right, but my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble quoted the doctors’ oath, which says: "I will…not allow prejudice to influence my practice" If only our profession had done the same, because the position of cannabis and the psychedelics in schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 is not supported by any evidence. Why on earth is heroin subject to fewer controls for research purposes than the psychedelics? I am not aware of any cases where the psychedelics have directly caused harm—obviously nothing like the scale of harm caused by drugs that have been made legal, such as alcohol and tobacco, or by the opiates. In response to parliamentary questions, the Home Office has been unable to produce the evidential base The rotten truth about cannabis is that its position in the regulatory framework rests on the racist policing of the United States in the 1950s, which is the basis of the world’s approach to drugs policy, and that basis is morally bankrupt. When we have now to deal with the consequences, we ought to bear that in mind. We have a duty to try to find a way to make good the damage that we have done. When I say "we", I mean 50 or 60 years of politicians, who have avoided engaging in these difficult questions. We have put ourselves on a moral high mountain, and have not been prepared to engage with the difficult trade-offs that are engaged by this issue. Our objective should be to protect the public good and to have a positive outcome for society through medicines and treatments—the positive things that drugs can do—as well as to minimise the damage that they can do I want to draw the attention of the House to the work of the magnificent people who work at Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group Ltd. The organisation is not part of our party, but I fully accept that its principal objective is aimed at our party because the position on the centre right is naturally rather more resistant to change than, perhaps, other parts of the political spectrum. Eighteen months ago, the group produced a terrific review of where we are on medicinal cannabis, called "The UK Review of Medicinal Cannabis", which identifies, as a consequence of our policy, how many people are being driven into criminality in order to get the therapeutic use of a medicine based on cannabis It is not right that there are about 50,000 people growing their own cannabis to try to treat their multiple sclerosis. We should be in a better place and serve people better. We should not need Carly Barton to have to produce a pass to say that people have a diagnosis that might suggest that they would need medicinal cannabis in order for them to avoid arrest. All those people are formally at risk of 14 years in prison in order to access a therapeutic product. We are not in the right place on this issue, and it is up to us to try to correct it. I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble that we should not impose the answer on medical professionals, scientists and researchers, but I am afraid that that is what we have done, which is why we are held in collective contempt by the body of science and research. Opportunities have gone begging over decades because our drugs policy, in its widest sense, has not been informed by evidence and data.