A<\/span>mong western European nations, the UK parliament is perhaps most strident in its view that cannabis is a dangerous drug whose users should be treated like criminals.<\/p>\n Throughout most of Europe<\/a>, sick people can access marijuana grown in controlled conditions under the authority of their governments. In Italy<\/a>, for example, medical marijuana is grown in an army lab\u00a0and even oft-conservative Germany<\/a>\u00a0legalized medical marijuana a year ago.<\/p>\n But in England, authorities are following the lead of the American federal government and insisting that marijuana is harmful. While penalties are far less harsh than in the United States, cannabis remains under the control of the UK\u2019s Home Office<\/a> \u2014 the arm of the government that includes antiterrorism efforts, the prison system and domestic surveillance \u2014 and consuming the plant remains illegal.<\/p>\n However, following the plight of Alfie Dingley<\/a>, a six-year-old epileptic whose family was forced to relocate to the Netherlands to give him cannabis oil, even lawmakers from the UK\u2019s leading Conservative Party are asking authorities<\/a> in Prime Minister Theresa May\u2019s government to relent.<\/p>\n A bill<\/a> that would allow limited legalization of marijuana for strictly medical purposes will be read for the second time in Parliament this week, setting up for a legislative debate on the validity of medical marijuana.\u00a0But here\u2019s an unfortunate wrinkle: Without official support from Prime Minister May and her cabinet ministers, few bills can hope to become law in the UK.<\/p>\n And so, it appears that medical marijuana in the UK has as much chance of becoming law as the many cannabis-friendly bills in the U.S. Congress, which, year-after-year, die for want of a committee hearing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s a \u201cbarbaric position,\u201d according to Paul Flynn, the Labour MP from Wales who introduced the bill in Parliament.<\/p>\n Parents of epileptic children like Alfie have had to watch their children turn blue or flee the UK for kinder climes overseas, for no other reason than the \u201cblind stupidity of the government,\u201d Flynn added in an impassioned video posted to his Facebook<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cCannabis is a useful medicine, the oldest medicine in the world. And there\u2019s no denying its use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n It\u2019s an ironic situation, as the British bear responsibility for introducing cannabis into the western pharmacopoeia. It was William O\u2019Shaughnessy<\/a>, an Irish doctor in the service of the British East India Company, who studied the medicinal application of cannabis and published one of the very first papers in medical literature documenting its value while working in Calcutta. And, as Flynn pointed out on the floor of the House of Commons when he first introduced the bill last October, Queen Victoria<\/a> is said to have used cannabis to relieve her menstrual cramps.<\/p>\n Cannabis is classified as a \u201cClass B<\/a>\u201d drug in the UK, the second-most punitive category. Cannabis was very briefly moved into Class C, from 2004 until 2008, until hysteria over \u201csuper-potent\u201d cannabis, dubbed \u201cskunk<\/a>\u201d in the UK, convinced authorities to put the drug back in Class B.<\/p>\n Thus far, both the major political parties in UK parliament have proven unwilling to move much on marijuana. It was the \u201cleft-wing\u201d Labour Party<\/a> that saw the drug reclassified a decade ago, and May, the Conservative PM, last year suggested<\/a> that cannabis use leads to heroin \u2014 and suicide.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think the United Kingdom will legalize medical marijuana soon?<\/p>\n The post UK Parliament Will Debate the Future of Marijuana Legalization<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The movement for marijuana legalization in Great Britain might be picking up momentum, as the UK Parliament will debate a limited legalization bill on Feb. 23 on the future of marijuana legalization. Among western European nations, the UK parliament is perhaps most strident in its view that cannabis is aContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3394,50,3395,3396,80,2576,3397,901,139,3398,81,3399,3400,3401,1572,3402],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23859,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23858\/revisions\/23859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: UK Parliament Will Debate the Future of Marijuana Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"