Cannabis-based Medicines

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am very much aware of that. It is perfectly correct for my hon. Friend to highlight this point. As I made clear in my statement and I am happy to make absolutely clear again, there are no plans at all to decriminalise cannabis. It is a controlled class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and that will not change.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

All of us must want children—and also adults—to get the medical treatment that they need without additional hurdles that have nothing to do with medicine. I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that he will look at the scheduling of cannabis, because it is incredibly hard to explain the scheduling classification of cannabis compared to opiates, and the additional burdens that that scheduling poses for the health service if such products are needed for treatment. May I ask him again to look more widely at the barriers and obstacles in his review? Will he look at whether these kinds of scheduling or licensing decisions should be passed to the Department of Health and Social Care, and whether much more drugs policy should, in fact, be led by that Department?

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Lady makes a number of good points. She is right to highlight that there are currently drugs that are under schedule 2, meaning that the medical benefits are accepted, but which can be a lot more harmful than other drugs if they are used in the wrong way. She asked about the role of the Department of Health and Social Care in these kinds of decisions. This requires a cross-Government approach, with the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care working closely together, as we have seen. We have an issue in that these drugs are categorised as illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but we need to recognise, where appropriate, that some of them have medicinal benefits, as has already been recognised with, for example, cocaine and morphine. It is therefore appropriate that the two Departments work together.